ITALY – Following the statements by Spanish broadcaster’s Toni Prieto, regarding EBU’s quest to seek changes in the voting format, a special Eurovision Workshop took place in Rome, Italy.
In that workshop, national broadcaster representatives watched out the preparations of the Dutch broadcasters for the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest edition along an aftermath report from the Tel Aviv event.
Big topic was also the discussion about the accommodation. It seems that the 2020 organisers are in serious discussions – negotiations with the Duch hotel industry in Rotterdam to avoid further price increase in the accommodation.
After all, it became known that two days after Duncan’s victory, the main preparations kicked off with consecutive meetings on Monday following the Grad Final.
The main topic was though the voting change, a search of the EBU which would have applied as of the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest and not in the Rotterdam edition. The main reason for that search was the mistakes in the 2019 Grand Final voting and announcement which steered many delegations and artists.
Though 80% of the delegations voted in favour of keeping the 50-50 ratio format.
An issue risen was that of the small nations having problem to find jury members (as EBU rules state that each year members of the jury must be renewed and not involved in the event for the past five years).