Spain and Belgium’s public broadcasters have filed complaints with the contest’s organisers, the European Broadcasting Union.
The Eurovision Song Contest celebrates its 69th year in Switzerland, where it first took place in 1956. Viewers outside the UK can also watch the show by using a VPN to access.
Eurovision is facing accusations of promoting “manipulation” through its voting system after Israel nearly won this year’s contest.
The annual event drew controversy again over Israel’s involvement. Contestant Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the 7 October Hamas attacks, earned 357 points from the combined jury and public votes for his song “New Day Will Rise.”
His performance sparked protests, including during the grand final on Saturday (17 May), when two audience members attempted to disrupt the show and a crew member was struck with paint.
This year’s contest, held in Basel, Switzerland, was won by Austria’s trained opera singer JJ, with Israel finishing in second place. As a result, Austria will host next year’s competition. Following Israel’s significant lead in the public vote, national broadcasters from Spain and Belgium have lodged complaints with the contest’s organisers, the European Broadcasting Union.
Read More: Eurovision Winner Nemo Backs Calls For Israel To Be Excluded From This Year’s Contest
Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE and Flemish broadcaster VRT are calling on organisers to investigate the televoting system, which lets viewers vote up to 20 times from home, with each vote incurring a small charge via text or phone call.
The juries from both Spain and Belgium did not include Israel in the list of performers they awarded points to. However, televoters from both countries gave Raphael’s song the highest number of votes, earning Israel the full 12 points under the scoring system.
A system in which everyone can cast up to 20 votes is a system that encourages manipulation. Whether this manipulation occurred in our country and all other participating and non-participating countries must be investigated.
Katia Segers, a Flemish MP, stated
The VRT must take the lead in requesting this investigation. And in holding the debate on the televoting system within the EBU and on Israel’s participation.
She continued
The EBU acknowledged that both RTVE and VRT had reached out and stated it was taking the complaints “seriously.”
Martin Green, Eurovision’s director, stated: “It is important to emphasise that the voting operation for the Eurovision Song Contest is the most advanced in the world and each country’s result is checked and verified by a huge team of people to exclude any suspicious or irregular voting patterns.”
An independent compliance monitor reviews both jury and public vote data to ensure we have a valid result. We remain in constant contact with all participating broadcasters of the Eurovision Song Contest and take their concerns seriously.
He added
Calls for an investigation follow remarks by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who urged that Israel be banned from future Eurovision Song Contests due to its ongoing military actions in Gaza. At a news conference in Madrid, Sánchez highlighted that Russia was barred from the competition in 2022 after invading Ukraine.
Nobody was up in arms when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began three years ago and [Russia] had to leave international competitions and could not take part, as we have just seen, in Eurovision,
he said
Therefore Israel shouldn’t either, because what we cannot allow is double standards in culture.
In response, Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs, Amichai Chikli, mocked Sánchez’s comments, saying the 12 points awarded to Israel by the Spanish public felt like a “slap in the face” that was “heard here in Jerusalem.”
Sánchez, whose government formally recognized a Palestinian state last year, voiced support for “the people of Palestine who are experiencing the injustice of war and bombardment”.
Spain’s commitment to international law and human rights must be constant and must be coherent, Europe’s must be too.
he said
Source: The Independent