Representative of Austria, that will host a song competition next year Eurovision, criticized the “stupid and insignificant” cultural boycotts after several states announced that they would not participate in the next year of the above -mentioned competitionif it will include a representative of Israel. According to the AFP report, TASR reports this.
“Cultural boycotts are stupid and unnecessary, they keep us nowhere,” Sepp SchellHorn, a senior representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in an interview for the Austrian daily Kurier. Schellhorn claims that he and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Beate Meinl-Reisinger will send a letter to European counterparts to discourage them from such steps. “First of all, the song competition is a meeting or a competition of musicians and artists. I consider it very problematic to associate their role with a country’s policy,” said.
The Spanish public service broadcaster RTVE announced on Tuesday that Spain will not participate in the next Eurovision if it will be able to participate in Israel. The reason is the war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and the Palestinian militant Hamas movement. It is the first of the so -called “large five” countries that provide the most funds for the event that has done so.
Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland and the Netherlands expressed a similar attitude. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes Eurovision, plans to decide in December whether Israel will participate in the upcoming competition.
Eurovision is an international competition of popular musicin which in a live television broadcast The performers from more than 35 Member States of the European Broadcasting Union compete. In 2025, the Austrian singer JJ won the competition with Pop’s opera song Wasted Love. The past two years of the competition, which took place in Malmö, Sweden, and this year in Basel, Switzerland, were accompanied by protests by propalestine activists who opposed the disagreement of the participation of Israel.
