At midnight last night, the deadline passed for countries to withdraw from the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest without penalty. As exclusively reported by esctoday.com, Monaco announced their withdrawal from the competition on Tuesday. All other countries have agreed to participation. The list is due be officially confirmed by the EBU in early January, although with such clarity, and with the national selections already underway in several countries, esctoday.com expects that it may be formally announced sooner.

esctoday.com has been in contact with all countries that remained doubtful. Yesterday, we confirmed that Moldova had completed their turnaround. National broadcaster, TRM, has agreed to pay the participation fee and the country will send Natalia Barbu to Helsinki.

Today, we can confirm that Hungary will return to the competition, Serbia and Montenegro will both participate as independent states and Austria remain committed to a return to the Eurovision Song Contest.

Monaco yesterday cited political voting and an unfair disadvantage as their reasons for withdrawal. Although there has been concern amongst fans that several countries may withdraw for these reasons, Monaco are the first country to take this course of action, and it appears that for the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, no other countries will be following their lead. It does, however heighten concern about what will happen should countries such as Belgium, Netherlands, Andorra, Portugaland Iceland fail to qualify for the final once again next year.

UPDATE
Even earlier than esctoday.com anticipated, the EBU have officially confirmed that 42 countries will participate at the Eurovision Song Contest in Finland. 14 countries are automatically qualified for the final (Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom).

28 will compete for the remaining 10 places in the Semi Final on May 10th (Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, FYR Macedonia, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Turkey).