About this episode
The episode discusses the recent EBU General Assembly and the implications of the vote on Israel's participation in the contest.
Last week, on Thursday 4 December, EBU members met for the organisation’s scheduled General Assembly. At this meeting, Spanish broadcaster RTVE, along with seven other countries, called for a secret ballot on Israel’s participation, passing the threshold of five members required for the vote to take place. However, the EBU chose to tie this vote to its proposed new rules for the contest, creating a false dichotomy: accept the new rules with no vote on participation, or reject the rules and carry out a vote on participation. This put broadcasters in an unfairly difficult position, as they could only hold a vote on Israel if they had already rejected the new rules, and they had no guarantee a motion on Israel’s removal would pass, meaning a very real risk that they could reject the new rules and Israel stay in the contest, meaning that we’d be doomed to repeat the exact same scenario in 2026 as we’ve faced in the last two years. As a result, the new rules were approved and an Israeli delegation will be going to Vienna in 2026. It has since become apparent that this result was inevitable, as Roland Weißman, director-general of Austrian broadcaster ORF, went to Israel to assure…
Topics covered
- EBU General Assembly
- Israel participation
- broadcasting rules
- lobbying
- Eurovision contest
Keywords
- EBU
- Israel
- RTVE
- Eurovision
- broadcasting rules
- lobbying
- Roland Weißman
- Isaac Herzog
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: EBU, RTVE, Ynet
Places: Israel, Austria
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