Eurovision judging scandal regarding Romania and R. of Moldova

Romania could not announce the results of the votes of the Romanian jury, and the 12 points from our country were presented by the executive supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest Martin Osterdhal.

The presenters of Eurovision 2022 announced that there are problems in establishing the connection with Romania when the presenter Eda Marcus should have announced the results of the votes of the Romanian jury. When Eda Marcus was due to appear on screen, Mika, one of the presenters, said (see 3:27:58):

“The next country was Romania. However, we failed to make the connection and once again we go to the executive supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest Martin Osterdhal. Martin, please, you could take Romania’s place and give us the 12 points “.

Later, however, ESCXTRA, a profile publication, wrote that the Romanian jury was eliminated from the calculation of the final grades, because the organizer of the contest – the European Radio and Television Union (EBU) identified certain incorrect voting patterns. The EBU issued a statement explaining that national juries from six countries in the second semi-final were excluded from the competition.

The official score announced for the Republic of Moldova by Romania, on the Eurovision 2022 stage, was 0, although the Romanian jury vote for the Republic of Moldova was 12 points, the maximum score, says the Romanian public broadcaster TVR, accusing its cancellation and changing the rules during the game by the organizers.

TVR management says that Romania’s representatives were “surprised” to find that the result of the Romanian jury’s vote was not taken into account in the calculation of the final ranking, the organizers assigning another set of scores to the finalists, on behalf of our country’s jury. It states that the Romanian jury had decided to give maximum points to the Moldovan representatives and accuses that neither the jurors nor the TVR representatives were notified of suspicions about Romania’s vote, and the rules were changed during the game.

“In the analysis of the votes given by the national juries by the pan-European voting partner of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) after the second general rehearsal of the second semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) 2022, were identified certain irregular (“irregular”) voting patterns in the results of six countries. In order to comply with the Contest Voting Instructions, the EBU worked with its voting partner to calculate a substitute aggregate result for each country in question, both for the second semi-final and for the grand final (calculated on the basis of the results of other countries voting similar). In the message, Romania was not explicitly nominated on the list of the six countries, nor did it receive, at the end of the second semifinal, the one stating the identification of “irregular voting patterns”, an official communication regarding a suspicion. of the organizers regarding the jury vote in Romania”, the representatives of the Romanian Television said in a press statement.

According to TVR, the person in charge of managing the communication with EBU for the national jury vote noticed the discrepancy between the scores sent the day before, after the show for the jury, and the notes that EBU, during the event, announced that it will enter in the ranking. being from the national jury.

Romanian Television also requested the ESC organizers to provide them, officially, the concrete reasons why they replaced the Romanian jury score with a “substitute” calculated in a non-transparent way, and depending on the answer it will receive,”  TVR reserves the right to take measures to correct the situation”.

“7th place !!!! 2nd place in televoting. Thank you !!!! Thank youuuu! Peace, Love, Folklore and Rock’n’Roll! Ukraine, Romania, congratulations !!! Europe, congratulations! Dear audience, THANK YOU!” , Zdob and Zdub wrote on Facebook, who did a show in Turin with “Trenuletul/The Train”.

Responding to some dissatisfied fans with the scores obtained, the band from the Republic of Moldova reacted: “Regarding the jury votes, the EBU intervened. It canceled them. Search the internet for the EBU statement. The votes from 6 countries were invalid.”

Inquiry in Moldova

The judging scandal for Eurovision 2022 also affectED the Republic of Moldova, where the management of the public radio and television company, Teleradio-Moldova, decided to open an investigation, after finding a strange discrepancy between public votes and jury votes regarding Romania, according to TVR News.

Both the jury and the public in the Republic of Moldova gave Ukraine a maximum score (12 points) on Saturday night, but the following options differed. If the public from the Republic of Moldova offered Romania 10 points, the jury of specialists from the Republic of Moldova did not award the representative of Romania, wrs, not even one point.

“The attitude of the Moldovan jury towards the performance of Romanian artists on the stage of the Eurovision Song Contest is not the same as the attitude of the Republic of Moldova towards Romania. As can be seen from the statistics provided by the European Radio and Television Union, the viewers in the Republic of Moldova have opted mainly for, in an order that can be explained by the suffering of the eastern neighbor, Ukraine and Romania. It remains to be seen along the way what high standards (so high that they are currently inaccessible to the public in dissonance) had the Moldovan jury in its options, consisting of: Ilona Stepan, Adriano Marian, Cristina Scarlat, Eugen Doibani and Radmila Popovici “ , Vlad Turcanu, general manager of Teleradio-Moldova, posted on Facebook on Sunday.