Only 37 countries will participate in Eurovision 2025, in May, in Basel (Switzerland), and not 38 as was previously made official. This Wednesday, Moldova announced its withdrawal from the competition.
During a press conference organized by the public broadcaster TRM, the director of the Moldova 1 channel, Corneliu Durnescu, and the head of delegation Daniela Crudu, justified this decision, “after a thorough examination of the current situation”, for “economic, administrative and artistic” reasons.
The announcement comes a few days after the first auditions for the “Etapa Națională 2025” selection, the final of which was to be held on February 22. The level of the songs proposed had been the subject of numerous harsh criticisms online.
“Negative perception”
“This year’s national selection highlighted certain problems, including a decline in public interest and others concerning the general quality of the titles and performances. The negative perception generated in the eyes of specialists and the public shows that an in-depth reform of the selection process is necessary,” explained Corneliu Durnescu.
The director of Moldova 1 also specified that the amount of participation fees for Eurovision 2025 for his country was 21,486 euros. He thus denies rumors suggesting that the sum involved was 176,000 euros. The “considerable costs” involved in “the organization of the national final, the promotion of the artist, the travel and accommodation of the teams, the staging and the technical aspects” also weighed in the balance.
A cult saxophonist
As a result, for the first time since its first participation in 2005, Moldova will be absent from the Eurovision Song Contest. This country, located between Romania and Ukraine, has never won the competition, and its best result remains third place in 2017 with SunStroke Project. During its previous application in 2010, this group made the history of the competition thanks to its saxophonist who became a meme, the “Epic Sax Guy”.
-In 2022, the group Zdob și Zdub and the Advahov brothers caused a sensation with their song trainwhich came second in public votes behind the Ukrainian winners. But poorly classified by the professional juries, who placed them in twentieth position in their list, the Moldovans had to settle for seventh place in the final ranking.
Precedents
This is not the first time that a country having announced its participation has withdrawn a few weeks from the competition. This was particularly the case for France in 1974, due to national mourning after the death of Georges Pompidou which fell on the same day as the final. Dani had to give up his candidacy. In 2017, Russia decided to withdraw after the organizing country of this edition, Ukraine, refused the participation of singer Julia Samoylova. In 2019, Ukraine in turn withdrew, due to a lack of candidacy to propose after rejecting Maruv, the artist nominated during a telehook but who was accused of having too many links with Russia.
Our Eurovision file
In recent years, several countries have been excluded from the competition by the organizers for various reasons: Romania in 2017 (for financial reasons), Belarus in 2021 (because the song violated the rules) and Russia in 2022 (because the channel no longer met the conditions to be an active member of the European Broadcasting Union).
The Eurovision 2025 semi-finals will take place on May 13 and 15 at the St. Jakob Hall in Basel, Switzerland. The final will be held on May 17. The artist who will represent France has not yet been made official.
