A Mediated Version of “Europe”
The Eurovision Song Contest is committed to its “proud tradition of celebrating diversity through music.” Although the contest’s origins in 1956 were part of a larger strategy to attract greater broadcaster and audience investment in the European Broadcasting Union’s new television network, a romantic narrative of the ‘song to unite Europe’ continues to hold symbolic weight in how states, broadcasters, and audiences approach the Song Contest. Most importantly, the EBU’s vision of a united Europe was and continues to be purportedly apolitical.
However, the idea of creating a unified pan-European audience is not in itself immediately apolitical. Prior to the EBU’s creation in 1950, European nations belonged to two major broadcasting unions: the International Broadcasting Union (IBU) and the International Radio and Television Organization (OIRT). Both organizations dissolved under political pressures. The OIRT, for instance, would become a primarily Eastern European media network as Western European members left at the onset of the Cold War. As such, the EBU has distinguished itself from predecessors by aiming to keep media networks, content sharing, and broadcasting infrastructure independent from state control. Even so, the EBU’s shifting membership, best demonstrated by its merging with the OIRT in 1993, illustrates the evolution in ideas of what “Europe” is and the relationship between the state and media.
Throughout its history, the Eurovision Network has primarily centered Western European cultures and traditions in its programming. This has included tours of the Vatican, coverage of the Montreaux Narcissus Festival, and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. With the recent worsening of relations between Western and Eastern Europe, Eurovision’s western lean has come under increased contention. This is evidenced in the revival of the OIRT’s Intervision Song Contest, set to be held in Russia in September 2025 and organized by Russia’s Channel One in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Last held in 1980, the contest’s revitalization follows years of predominantly Eastern European criticisms decrying Eurovision’s perceived liberal values and politics, particularly in relation to queer rights and identities.
Participation as European-ness
Participation in Eurovision is not predicated on being a “European” country either geographically or geopolitically. Rather, participating public broadcasters—not states themselves—are members of the EBU. More specifically, to be eligible to participate, member broadcasters must be located within the European Broadcasting Area (EBA), which includes transcontinental regions, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. This explains the participation of Azerbaijan, Israel, and, in 1980, Morocco. Meanwhile, Australia, which is decidedly outside of the EBA, participates upon special invitation, rationalized by a long history of screening the contest, a significant fan base, and its own romanticised narrative of a connection to Europe forged via post-war European migration. For the EBU, Australia’s participation provides evidence of their global reach and symbolically underscores the importance of the contest’s shared (Western) values. Yet it also complicates the relevance of the EBA as the central point of eligibility to participate in Eurovision.
Eurovision’s audience is now more global than ever, reaching an estimated 160 million viewers globally each year, but it still holds at its center one idea as its lynchpin: Europe. Consequently, participating or not participating in Eurovision, performing well or poorly, winning or losing, is consistently framed as an indication of relations with “Europe,” its people, states, and their opinions of global events. For example, when Ukraine won the Song Contest in 2022, media commentators were quick to characterize their landslide popular vote as “a wave of goodwill from European nations” in the wake of the Russian invasion rather than an indication that it was the best or most popular song. The contest, therefore, plays an important role in constructing the global imaginary of “Europe,” its culture, and values.
Flying the Flag for Europe
Eurovision’s globalization, devoid of a clear articulation of its political commitments, has created tensions with certain participating countries as its presentation of liberal values is often perceived as imposing a Western worldview under the guise of universality. This friction between liberal and illiberal value systems continue to shape the contest’s political landscape. Over the years, Eurovision has nurtured a strong relationship to queer acceptance and queer identities. Although fans come from across the spectrum of gender identity and sexuality, for many, Eurovision provides an important sense of community and is the only global media mega-event to foreground queer representation and pride. However, not all participating countries hold these same values.
In 2012, Türkiye’s broadcaster withdrew from the Eurovision Song Contest, having participated since 1975, initially citing criticisms of the shift to a split jury-public televote voting system. Since, the broadcaster’s leadership has criticized Eurovision’s liberal politics of queer acceptance and inclusion as inappropriate to broadcast “when children are watching,” referring to bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst, who won for Austria in 2014. At the time of Wurst’s victory, Volkan Bozkir, the Chairman of Türkiye’s Foreign Affairs Committee stated, “Thank god we no longer participate in Eurovision.” The Turkish position reflects broader tensions regarding how Eurovision’s values translate geopolitically.
Similar tensions have arisen between Eastern and Western Europe, along a rough queer fault line representing members’ attitudes towards queer sexualities and identities. Russian and Belarusian audiences and politicians were also incensed by Wurst’s participation in the Song Contest and her eventual win. It was a useful rallying point for anti-queer sentiment in Western Europe as well. Moreover, in 2025, the EBU showed signs of acquiescing to these criticisms by banning artists from carrying pride flags and de-emphasizing the queer and camp dimensions of the song contest. This followed allegations from 2024 winner Nemo that they had to smuggle their non-binary flag past strict security.
This shift away from permitting, if not encouraging, expressions of queer pride and allyship by artists may reflect the EBU’s desire to retain participants, especially as the contest faces mounting criticism over various sociopolitical controversies, including allegations of preferential treatment toward the Israeli broadcaster and delegation. Over the last three years, the number of participating countries has been slowly decreasing from a high of 43 in 2018 to 37. For some countries, the decision to not participate is purely financial, but for others, the contest’s reputation as a celebration of queer pride is problematic. Hungary, for example, has not returned to the contest since 2019 due to the Orbán government’s hostility to LGBTQIA+ rights. According to Hungarian media insiders, the contest was deemed “too gay.” This reflects a broader climate of censorship under laws targeting so-called “LGBT propaganda.” In another example, queer rights have also come under scrutiny in the United Kingdom. A recent ruling by the UK Supreme Court limited the legal definition of “sex” to biological sex in certain equality legislation, a decision that critics warn could weaken protections for transgender individuals. In this broader European context, Eurovision’s restriction of artists’ identity expression—limiting symbols such as pride flags and requiring representation only through national emblems—cannot be viewed as neutral. This restriction implicitly supports political efforts to narrow the space of queer expression, making such restrictions deeply political.
Moreover, the restriction on artists displaying the EU flag, like the ban on pride flags, reveals Eurovision’s increasingly cautious approach to political symbolism, even when such symbols claim to represent inclusion and shared identity. The controversy over the EU flag at the 2024 Eurovision Grand Final offers an example. Dutch artist Joost Klein, whose disqualified entry “Europapa” was a tribute to his late parents and celebrated Europe as a “found family,” had prominently featured the EU flag in both his promotional materials and performance concept. While the EBU maintained that the flag ban was unrelated to politics, its decision to prohibit artists, but not fans, from displaying the EU flag reflected a broader retreat from transnational and identity-based symbolism on stage. While the EU plays no formal role in Eurovision, the symbolic weight of the EU flag has made it a site of contestation. Restricting its display underscores how the EBU increasingly polices expression of transnational belonging on stage. Rather than fostering an inclusive pan-European community, the selective regulation of symbols narrows the space for artists to articulate pluralistic or alternative visions of Europe, revealing the limits of Eurovision’s political neutrality.
Media, Politics, and the European Identity
Many of the public broadcasters participating in the Eurovision Song Contest are beholden to at least partial state funding or may have been constituted with the specific remit of representing the country’s culture and identity. Participating in Eurovision plays an important role in achieving this. As many European countries are acutely aware, representing one’s country’s identity and culture, even in something as seemingly innocuous as a song contest, is an important and deeply political act.
By extension, the EBU also plays an important role in communicating ideas. Its purported values of universality, independence, excellence, diversity, accountability, and innovation, coupled with the Eurovision Song Contest’s values of universality, diversity, equality, and inclusivity, are not apolitical or non-political, nor do they provide grounds for moral equivocation. The EBU’s decision-making around who can and cannot participate, which flags can and cannot be waved, cannot be divorced from the context in which these decisions are made.
In line with its value of accountability, the EBU needs to reconcile with the political repercussions of these decisions. Independence from government interference is important for media integrity and the maintenance of democratic processes, and the EBU’s defense of this should be lauded. Rather than separating it from politics, it illustrates what an integral part of politics it is.
As such, the EBU can and should take a clearer stance on matters of political importance. Unlike its member broadcasters, its independence from state interference is more assured. Its decision-making therefore needs to be in greater accordance with its values and with recognition that it is, indeed, a political actor in this sphere. As a political actor, the EBU has the opportunity to demonstrate greater leadership in safeguarding the freedom of expression, rather than becoming complicit in restricting those freedoms along politicized lines in the name of “neutrality.” It needs to expand meaningfully on its statement of values into clearer guidelines on what these values mean in practice, taking accountability for how its current limitations on expressions of transnational identities contravene its goals of protecting freedom of speech and Eurovision’s purported celebration of diversity. In so doing, the EBU can embrace its responsibility in facilitating public understandings of what constitutes Europe—not as a geopolitical space but as an idea that progresses, in the fullest sense of the word, into the twenty-first century.
. . .
Jessica Carniel is an Associate Professor in Humanities in the School of Humanities and Communication at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. She is currently a 2024-2026 Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, which supports her research into Eurovision as a site of participatory diplomacy. She is the author of “Understanding the Eurovision Song Contest in Multicultural Australia” (Palgrave 2018) and the co-editor of “Eurovision and Australia: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Down Under” (with Chris Hay, Palgrave 2019).
Image Credit: David Jones, CC-BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
