Are we set to see some innovations being made to next year’s Slovene Eurovision national selection, EMA, when it comes to the language rule with the participating entries? According to reports, we might well be.

Slovenes to change their EMA language rule?

During the meeting of the Programming Council of RTVSLO on the 22 May, a solution regarding the language rules within the country’s Eurovision national selection, EMA, was reportedly proposed according to Evrovizija.com.

When it comes to EMA 2017 and earlier, authors of the competing songs were free to choose the language of their songs before submitting them to the broadcaster.

With the changes proposed, every song submitted to RTVSLO would need to be written and submitted in the Slovene language, or alternatively in any other recognized minority language of the nation. The recognized minority languages are:

• Croatian
• German
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Romani
• Serbian

In the final of the Slovene national selection, the artists would then have the right to sing their entries in any other language of their choice.

Official news regarding changes to the Slovene national selection are expected to be released in due course.

Slovenia at Eurovision 2017

In 2017, Slovenia was represented by the artist Omar Naber with his entry On my way. However, he did not manage to qualify for the final, as he ended in 17th position in the first semi-final with 36 points.

It is also notable that the same singer represented the nation previously in 2005, when the contest also took place in the Ukrainian capital.

Here’s the live performance of Omar Naber at the first semi-final:

Since the abolition of the language restriction rule in 1999, the Slovenes have performed 10 entries entirely in English, 7 entirely in Slovene and 2 with both English and Slovene lyrics. The best result of the nation has been two 7th placing in 1995 and in 2001.