The EBU has decided to withdraw the voting result of one of the Russian jury members. This is the outcome of the investigation of a video recording made and published by a member of the Russian jury, during the judging for the first Semi-Final of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest during last night’s dress rehearsal.
Russia’s participating broadcaster, RTR proposed to withdraw the respective jury member who produced the video recording. As a consequence, the EBU declared the voting result of the respective judge invalid. The other four judges submitted a valid jury vote. RTR will have the opportunity to provide a replacement judge for the Grand Final on Saturday 14 May.
In a statement to the EBU, Russian broadcaster RTR expressed regret at the actions of its’ juror. RTR has also apologised to Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS and Armenian broadcaster AMPTV for the online broadcast of their performances. The EBU does not consider it a breach of the rules to stream a video online from the jury deliberation, as long as individual rankings, combined rankings or jury points are kept confidential until after the Grand Final. Nevertheless, the EBU regards the actions of the person involved as not in keeping with the spirit of the competition and potentially prejudicial as it imposes a potential risk of accidentally revealing results.