The EBU confirmed that the announced relegation system will be introduced immediately ! The past years, the countries with the highest average of points over the past five years where ensured of participation, but now the countries which finish with the lowest score will be disqualified in the following contest.

Christine Marchal-Ortiz from the European Broadcasting Union confirmed the news at ESCOL. “There will be a change in the rules concerning the criteria for admission to the contest. The point is to avoid penalising the countries with a bad results for a long period of time (five years in the current system) and to make the system easier to explain and make the voting more exciting as people will know that if you are below a certain ranking you are out for the following year”…

An unknown number of countries – it will prbably be seven – won”t participate next year, because they ended up at one of the last seven places. Those countries will be out next year and Belgium, Austria, Cyprus, FYR Macedonia, Finland, Rumania and Switzerland will be in again. This new system will – we already wrote – immediately work for Copenhagen 2001.

Four coutries can always participate in the Eurovision Song Contest: France, Germany, United Kingdom and Spain. Marchal indicated that no change will be made to this ruling. “Even if you do not subscribe to the rule, our only concern is to keep the contest alive for a very long time and avoid having countries starting to loose their interest in the contest and gradually lose participants which will end with no contest at all. Everybody is already very concerned that Italy is out, let”s not have a longer list”, Marchal said. Without the money of this countries, the Eurovision Song Contest won”t live long.

It”s for sure there will be more competition because of the new system…