National broadcaster TVR announced on Thursday, January 25, that Romania will not participate in the 2024 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. The TVR Board of Directors cited "financial constraints and the desire to represent Romania at a high performance level" as reasons for this decision.

The decision was taken with 5 votes to 4, and 4 abstentions, TVR announced.

"Also today, the Board of Directors approved the SRTv budget for 2024, which does not contain enough funds to guarantee Romania's participation according to the increasingly high standards of the international competition," Tvr.ro reported.

According to the same source, in addition to established productions, TVR is allocating substantial resources to other priority productions and projects, such as broadcasting the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, its ongoing re-engineering process, investments in the news production system, or the continuation of investments in the new headquarters of TVR Craiova.

"Although it benefited from an extension of the 2024 contest registration deadline, thanks to a traditional collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organizer of the contest, TVR is forced to postpone the participation in the Eurovision Song Contest for a future edition," Tvr.ro said, adding that, over the years, several countries such as Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina or North Macedonia, have decided not to participate in the international competition.

Eurovision 2024 will take place in the city of Malmö in Sweden.

In 2023, Romania failed to qualify for the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. Theodor Andrei, with his song D.G.T. (Off and on), did not manage to pass the second semifinal of the music competition.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Facebook/Eurovision Song Contest)