several countries are considering leaving the competition in a context more tense than ever

CULTURE – A shipwreck may be predicted. Thousands of demonstrators against the participation of Israel, the Dutch candidate excluded for a “threatening movement” towards a camera operator, and now candidates who refuse to participate… The Eurovision 2024 final which takes place this Saturday, May 11 in Malmö, Sweden, would almost make you forget that it is a musical event.

According to the Norwegian newspaper VG, cited by 20 Minutes, many countries including Portugal, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are considering leaving the competition while the final has just started. One of the Eurovision commentators in Austria, Jan Böhmermann, states in his Instagram story that Ireland, Estonia and Switzerland refuse to perform.

In the case of no-shows, the European Broadcasting Union which organizes the event can use recordings of performances from the show for the jury, according to Jan Böhmermann. The candidates would therefore not strictly speaking be eliminated.

The spokespeople pack up

In addition to the candidate representatives of their country, the spokespersons of the delegations pack up one after the other. In an Instagram story, Käarijä, a Finnish artist who came second in the competition last year, declared that he would not distribute his country’s points. The Norwegian 2023 candidate, Alessandra, had made the same decision a little earlier. As the ceremony began, the Dutch channel Avotros indicated that it would not announce the points for the Netherlands, due to the exclusion of its candidate Joost Klein.

These last minute defections occur in the context of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. But despite numerous calls to boycott the Jewish state, the Israeli candidate, Eden Golan, 20, won her ticket for the final on Thursday evening with the song Hurricanethe initial version of which had to be modified because it was considered to allude to the Hamas attack on October 7.

In front of the Malmö arena this Saturday evening, around fifty demonstrators who wanted to approach the enclosure shouting “Liberate, liberate Palestine” are kept apart by heavily armed police, but they can raise their banner “Welcome to the Genocide Song Contest”. 5,000 people demonstrated in the afternoon in the streets of Sweden’s third city, according to the police, to protest against Israel’s participation.

After the exclusion of Joost Klein, a first in the history of the competition, twenty-five countries are competing to succeed Sweden as winner of this competition which was followed in 2023 by 162 million viewers.

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