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TVR responds to Romania’s jury vote being excluded from Eurovision 2022

Broadcaster TVR from Romania have responded to the fact that EBU decided to exclude their jury votes during the Eurovision Song Contest 2022. Romania were one of the six countries having their jury vote disqualified, alongside Azerbaijan, Georgia, Poland, San Marino and Montenegro. In a statement on their website, the Romanian broadcaster calls the EBU’s decision “an unpleasant surprise”.

TVR claim not to have been informed

In their statement, the Romanian broadcaster states that they had not received any information about the exclusion of their jury scores. They specifically state that their jury had awarded twelve points to Moldova. However, in the accumulated jury score that was created by the EBU upon excluding Romania’s jury, Moldova didn’t receive a single point. Instead, their twelve points now went to eventual winners Kalush Orchestra from Ukraine.

TVR also highlight the fact that their spokesperson, Eda Marcus, eventually did not appear on screen to deliver the Romanian jury scores. They claim that the EBU did not inform them that there were suspicions regarding their jury votes and that Marcus took part in briefings and rehearsals for the spokespersons.

The full statement

Below, you can read a translation of the full statement by TVR.

We were surprised to discover that the result of the Romanian jury’s vote was not taken into account in the calculation of the final ranking. The organisers assigned a different set of points to the participants of the final, on behalf of the jury of our country. We specify that the Romanian jury decided to give maximum score to the representatives of Moldova.

In the message [sent to participating countries on Saturday night], Romania was not explicitly mentioned on the list of the six countries, nor did it receive an official communication regarding the suspicion of the organisers regarding the jury vote in Romania at the end of the second semi-final in which it the find of “irregular voting patterns” is specified. The person in charge of the communication between TVR and 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 announced as coming from the national jury during the event.

At the same time, our spokesperson Eda Marcus was not allowed to appear on the official broadcast to present the results […]. Moreover, during Saturday, the person in charge of voting from TVR participated in two briefings with the organisers to establish the rules of for Eda Marcus. She also participated in the rehearsal for the transmission of the jury’s result, without receiving any communication regarding any suspicions or the organisers’ intention to make changes to the Romanian jury vote.

We emphasize that the national jury watched the show, after which they voted in the presence of a notary and complied with the rules introduced by the organisers. We reiterate that neither the jurors nor the TVR representatives were notified, after the second semifinal, of the existence of any suspicions about Romania’s vote.

Therefore, the rules were changed during the game, without the participants being notified in advance, as they found out during the broadcast that some votes of the national juries were changed by the organisers.

In this extraordinary situation, which surprised us unpleasantly, TVR asked the ESC organisers to provide us, officially, the clear reasons why they replaced the jury score in Romania 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 created.

TVR, Romania’s broadcaster of the Eurovision Song Contest

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2 Comments

  1. I think EBU has created a dangerous precedent in overriding a country vote by:
    1. Not communicating with the countries suspected of fraud to check the other side of the story or at least to let them know
    2. Recalculating the VOTE using an algorithm that is not transparent to anyone. This is itself worse than the country fraud (if any as not proved to date)
    3. Lying live on TV millions of viewers that is a technical issue while the country was prepared and had been live few min before . Not even on that very last minute, EBU communicate.
    This is disrespectful for the country as a member of this contest, it is disrespectful for each jurors as well if EBU do not prove the fraud or tentative of fraud.
    I don\’t think how you can influence the jury vote when there are a number of people in each jury – and there were 6 different countries…To make 3-4 people agree on something takes time, but 20-30 jurors.. ? And why will those jurors put their careers on spot for this ? This makes no sense at all to me.. !!
    4. Everyone is now questioning the whole competition results as we don\’t know how this \’recalculation\’ was done and how EBU has directly influenced the results.
    5. Would this become a business as usual practice now? EBU can override any jury vote if they \’feels\’ like \’something may not be right\’ ?

    EBU needs to explain in very details what has happen to regain credibility for this contest end results, for this year and for the years to come.

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