TVR asks for explanation from EBU for replacing Romanian jury's vote at Eurovision contest

The Romanian National Television channel TVR expresses its surprise that the result of the Romanian jury's vote at Eurovision has not been taken into account in the calculation of the final ranking, the organizers assigning another set of scores to the finalists on Romania' behalf, for which reason TVR asks the organizers of the competition to provide, officially, the concrete reasons why they decided to do so.

The Romanian jury has decided to give the maximum score to the representatives of Moldova, TVR specified on Sunday, in a press release sent to AGERPRES.

"In a message sent to the representatives of the participating countries on Saturday night, during the announcement of the results of the national jury vote for the ESC final (around 1.00 am), the EBU stated that: "In the analysis of the national jury votes 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, there were identified certain irregular vote patterns in the results of six of the 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 semifinal and for the grand final (calculated on the basis of the results of other voting countries with a similar vote)," shows the press release of TVR.

According to the public television, 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 concerning the jury's vote in our country.

The person in charge at TVR to manage 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 scores that EBU, during the event, announced that it will introduce in the ranking as coming from the Romanian national jury.

"At the same time, presenter Eda Marcus was not allowed to enter the official broadcast to communicate the results, as TVR had previously agreed with the organizers, according to the procedures. Moreover, on Saturday, the person in charge of voting from TVR participated in two teleconferences with the organizers where there were established the rules of presentation/posture/reading for Eda Marcus. She also participated in the rehearsal for the communication of the results of the jury, without receiving any communication regarding such suspicions or the intent of the organizer to operate modifications on the vote of the Romanian jury," reads the same press release.

TVR points out that the national jury watched the show after which it voted in the presence of a notary public and complied with the rules imposed by the organizer.

"We reiterate that neither the jurors nor the TVR representatives were notified, after the second semifinal, of the existence of suspicions about Romania's vote. This means that the rules were changed during the game, without the participants being previously announced, as they found out about the modification of their national jury's vote results during the broadcasting," TVR claims.

Thus, TVR asked the ESC organizers to provide, officially, the concrete reasons why they replaced the Romanian jury's score with a "substitute" calculated in a "non-transparent" way.

"Depending on the answer that will be sent to us, TVR reserves the right to take measures to correct the situation," the press release says.