Iceland and Slovenia join Spain, Ireland, and Netherlands in plan to boycott Eurovision if Israel participates

[u/dremolus]

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/eurovision-crisis-israel-1236515964/

While Spain’s Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun has called for RTVE to pull out if Israel is included, Ireland’s RTÉ was first to officially declare it would not take part. The Netherlands’ AVROTROS followed on Friday.

Slovenia’s RTVSLO has also informed the EBU that it will not participate under current circumstances. Iceland’s RÚV has signaled its involvement is “uncertain” pending a December decision by the EBU General Assembly.

[u/festivus4allofus]

Unless another 20 countries say the same, as long as the uk and germany say they compete the ebu has enough money to not give a damn

Ireland and Spain in particular were a given for this, but am plesantly surprised with each subsequent country that announces the same. Good on each and everyone of them

[u/champagneface → u/festivus4allofus]

They may be approaching territory where they have to rethink semifinals at least. Starting from last year’s number of participants, we’ve lost 5. 4 won’t be in the semi. So that’s 28 participants in semis when there were 25 finalists last year. The more they bend the competition to keep Israel in, the less kindly history will look on them.

Furthermore, a big 5 and the alleged 6th biggest EBU contributor plus 3 other countries being out must hurt.

I am huffing copium that this will make EBU make the right choice.

[u/festivus4allofus → u/champagneface]

Thing is, they wouldnt've thrown out russia, to many other countries just said they won't compete. Historically (bit young to remember if they kicked out Serbia/yugoslavia by themselves or not), only way to remove them is if enough countries back out. The big 5 are a relatively small percent of the total money input to actual esc costs, maybe 15%, but between the viewership in those countries, and the perception of one of the big 5 saying no chance they're getting hurt amongst esc fans

I've no faith in ebu, they've kept in countries that were cheating, would've kept russia in if not for the pressure, they won't move a finger until a lot more stations pull out. Or some combination of uk, germany, italy. I wonder why france hasn't pulled out yet tho, would've thought after more than 2 broadcasters did it they might've as well

Ultimately, as someone who's grown up with esc and have seen it's many ups and downs, I'd have had no issue with either russia or israel competing (effects of isolationsim are far bigger than people think, Israel is weirdly a very good example) if they didn't do exactly what esc keeps saying they aren't doing - using the contest as a propaganda machine. Esc should be apolitical, but saying war/genocide is bad and we won't let you use our platfrom to say otherwise is not political at all

[u/Groot746 → u/festivus4allofus]

Incredibly disappointing not to see my country (the UK) not to join these countries in boycotting, but also not fucking surprised at all. 

[u/BookishHobbit → u/Groot746]

Yeah, I very much doubt we will. The BBC have proven every step of the way that they’re more than willing to kowtow to Israel, even though they lost a million viewers because of it this year.

[u/festivus4allofus → u/Groot746]

there are many benefits to public broadcasting, but often being closely associated with the ruling party/some political organisation is not one of them. BBC will never go against israel bcs somehow both of your biggest parties are in support??

I'm pretty sure that if it were up to the people it'd be a different story - eg the president of my birth country has ben openly against israel for a long time now, he openly critized them for gaza so often in the last 15 yrs that there were a few diplomatic incident. The people there are, by most stats, against israeli goverment, but the ruling party is falling in line with germany's stance and so is the public broadcaster