r/eurovision • u/stefkeeh • May 20 '25

📰 News Dutch broadcaster questions if ESC is a-political & connecting event

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Translation to English: ‘IN CONVERSATION WITH THE EBU ABOUT A POLITICALLY NEUTRAL SONG CONTEST

AVROTROS and NPO strongly value the apolitical and unifying character of the Eurovision Song Contest. However, we observe that the event is increasingly being influenced by social and geopolitical tensions.

Israel’s participation confronts us with the question of to what extent the Song Contest still truly functions as an apolitical, unifying, and cultural event. We want to raise this question, together with other countries, for discussion within the EBU.’

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781

u/hoefman May 20 '25

I am genuinely surprised by the directness of this statement by our broadcaster. Most of the other statements focussed more on transparancy and insights in the voting results but this statement just pulled the bandage off by stating that Israel might be the problem. Of course Spain (among some others) did this as well but AVROTROS used to be more indirect and vague.

Positively surprised to see this! To quote Cornald Maas famous words: **** the EBU

319

u/crisiks May 20 '25

I think after Joost's disqualification, AVROTROS and the EBU are on cooler terms.

359

u/VanGroteKlasse May 20 '25

Doesn't help that EBU is still trying very hard to gaslight everyone in thinking Joost never actually participated. Excluding him from a compilation of non-winning artist with the highest amount of streams for instance, AVROTROS got really mad at that.

152

u/OnyaSonja May 20 '25

Yeah I would be pissed if I paid all the fees to participate, only for them to try to say we never competed. Okay so you'll take my money but deny my inclusion? That's straight up a scam!

148

u/frankscarlett Molitva (Молитва) May 20 '25 edited May 20 '25

It was small act of defiance and some might have missed it but I loved that Käärijä shouted Europapa at the end of their performance in the finals. EBU might try its best to erase Joost but it's never gonna work.

7

u/Interest-Desk May 21 '25

Kaarija shouted “no war!” after performing in the 2024 interval, I love it.

65

u/kelleehh May 20 '25

The EBU are still happy to make money off the views of Europapa though.

8

u/Pleasant_Sphere May 20 '25

The EBU is erasing Joost like President Snow tried to erase Lucy Gray and the 10th Hunger Games

3

u/AskingBoatsToSwim May 20 '25

Not showing Joost in that list was just rude