The Netherlands has decided to participate in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in Switzerland, after receiving assurances from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) that performers will not be disturbed when they leave the stage. In the last edition, which took place in May 2024 in Malmö (Sweden), the Dutch singer Joost Klein was disqualified after the accusation of a worker of the contest due to threats. Klein was later acquitted for lack of evidence and has now declined to return with a new song.
The radio station AVROTROS, which organizes the selection of singers in the Netherlands and the festival itself when appropriate, has announced both the decision to participate and Klein’s withdrawal. Television officials claim to have spoken for months with the EBU, and to have received “sufficient guarantees that there will be structural changes to the festival,” as indicated in a press release.
Areas that have been analyzed include safety in the artists’ environment and behind-the-scenes filming. Also the creation of a safe space where the singers are not disturbed, and a crisis team. The latter would be made up of representatives of the EBU, the participating countries and the organizing station. The new director of the festival, Martin Green, will supervise this new stage, after having been the executive producer of Eurovision 2023, in Liverpool (United Kingdom). He will take the reins starting in November. In 2024, Nemo Mettler won the winner’s crystal microphone with the song The codewhich described her journey of self-discovery to embracing her non-binary identity.
Joost Klein was disqualified from the Eurovision final for allegedly threatening a woman who was recording him without her consent. The EBU explained in a statement that “the Swedish police were analyzing the complaint of a member of the production team for an incident that occurred after the singer’s performance in the semifinal.” In August of the same year, the Swedish prosecutor’s office announced the closure of the case due to lack of evidence. According to the investigation, “it could not be demonstrated that the gesture caused serious fear or that the man (Klein) had that intention.”
This Wednesday, Klein himself said on Dutch television that he had thought about entering Eurovision again and even had a new melody. However, “we think that maybe the magic is the magic of last year,” he said, in a discussion led by presenter Eva Jinek. “Perhaps the EBU has not changed that much and it is an exhausting process,” added the artist, who did not explain what happened in Sweden despite Jinek’s insistence. Klein’s evasions during the program caused surprise and this was reflected in the Dutch press this Thursday. In the statement explaining his decision, the artist adds that he remains “very affected” by what happened, and that he is not made “for this great machine, since the media is what it is.” He concludes by assuring that his “European and United States tour has sold out,” and that he is still “ongoing.”
The decision to remove the singer from the festival in Sweden for what was considered a violation of the contest rules caused great controversy in the Netherlands. It was considered disproportionate and AVROTROS indicated at the time that it regretted the situation “and we will return to the matter later.” Klein’s song, titled Europapais an ode to his father and ended up being number one in the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania and Flanders (Belgium). In the same television interview, Klein said that he cried a lot “because that song means a lot to me.” In any case, he has decided to leave because he also received “death threats” after the disqualification. “As the summer progressed, dark forces emerged on the Internet,” he says. AVROTROS is now looking for singers and songs and accepts applications until the end of November.
