Will we see Kosovo at Eurovision? Although the state’s broadcaster has been eager to acquire a full EBU membership and also enter the Eurovision Song Contest for a long time now, it seems there will be no such prospect in the near future.

Reportedly with the Serbian national broadcaster RTS, a full membership of the Kosovar national broadcaster RTK was rejected by a large majority at the 82nd General Assembly of the EBU in Oslo, Norway.

In this current assembly, several changes in the EBU’s statute which were promoted by some of its member broadcasters, but they finally did not pass. One of them would help RTK to become a full EBU member, despite Kosovo not being part neither of the United Nations, nor of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). (*)

Present at the meeting was the Assistant Director of RTS, Milivoje Mihajlović, who announced that 673 votes were against Kosovo’s request, while 400 votes were in favor of the state’s admission to the European Broadcasting Union. This process was initiated by a group of 5 neighboring countries (North Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary), with the latter finally withdrawing their signature.

However, the arguments of the Serbian broadcaster RTS, that such a possibility could have a bad impact on the peace in the region, as well as the EBU itself, which is identified as a non-political organization, were accepted by the EBU members.

Milivoje Mihajlović expects the news not to affect negatively the future development of the Kosovar broadcaster, as “they have a contract with the EBU and have all the benefits that the EBU offers to its members and affiliated members”, he claims.

Source: rts.rs

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(*) It is recalled that despite having declared their independence from Serbia in 2008, Kosovo is still not recognized as an independent state from countries whose national broadcasters are members of the EBU (including Serbia, Greece, Spain and Romania).