"Irregular voting patterns" have been identified in the results of six countries participating in the second semi-final of Eurovision 2022, won on Saturday by Ukraine, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said in a statement. published this Thursday.
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino have had their votes canceled by the organization of the competition, which suspects them of having helped each other when performing their rankings.
“During the second semi-final, it was observed that four of the juries placed the other five countries in their Top 5, one of the juries placed the same five countries in its Top 6 and that the last ranked four of these country in its Top 4 and the fifth in its Top 7. Four of these six countries have received the maximum score of 12 points at least once”, indicates the EBU.
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The organizers dismissed the thesis of coincidence when they saw that none of these six countries appeared in any of the Top 8 of the 15 other juries participating in the semi-final.
"Four of the six countries were ranked in the bottom six places of the rankings of the 15 countries", specifies the EBU.
“Given the unprecedented nature of the irregularity detected in the second semi-final, the EBU, in consultation with the pan-European voting partner and the independent voting controller, has decided, in accordance with the voting instructions for the contest , to exercise its right to suppress votes,” the body said.
The EBU replaced their rankings with algorithmically calculated Top 10s and to do the same for the final for which three of these countries (Azerbaijan, Poland and Romania) qualified.
“We were unpleasantly surprised to find that the vote was not taken into account in the final classification, the organizers awarding another series of marks to the competitors in the final”, had complained the Romanian television the day after the competition. .
