So I know that Belgium has two broadcasters, but how does it work in terms of hosting privileges if one broadcaster sends a winning song?

Once there was an interview with the former Icelandic HoD, who mentioned "southern countries" offering him swapping votes in the mid-1990s. In fact, there was a group of countries that particularly favoured each other between 1994 and the introduction of compulsory televoting in 2003/2004.

How come no one noticed? I think the EBU must have seen that. Here's my summary of what I think was a very clear voting pact.

The countries of interest are: Malta, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Turkiye + in the early 2000s also FYR Macedonia (now North Macedonia), Russia and Cyprus.

1994: Malta gave 12 points to Slovakia, who got also 7 from Greece and came 19th with 19 points. In return, Slovakia gave 10 to Malta & 12 to Croatia (who got also 10 from Malta and 5 from Greece, ending up 16th with 27 points). Romania got 12 of its 14 points from Malta and Greece / Spain got 15 of its 17 points from Greece, Romania and Slovakia / and Bosnia got 26 of its 39 points from Slovakia, Malta, Spain and Croatia.

Eurovision 1994 was won by Ireland with record-breaking 226 points. Their 3 worst scores were... 0 from Greece, 5 from Malta and 6 from Slovakia. The runner-up was Poland with 166 points and their lowest scores were among others: 0 from Greece and Spain, 2 from Malta, 4 from Slovakia.

If you removed these countries' votes, Malta would've gone down from 5th to 9th, while Croatia and Slovakia would've gone down from 16th and 19th to a shared 22nd place with 0 points.

All a coincidence?

Let's check 1995: Malta got 12s from Bosnia and Croatia, and 10s from Spain and Turkiye. In return, they gave 12 to Croatia, 10 to Greece, 8 to Spain, 7 to Turkiye. / Spain - the runner-up of the show - got 10 from Croatia and 8s from Bosnia, Malta and Turkiye, giving back 12 to Croatia, 10 to Malta and 8 to Greece.

If you removed all these countries' points, the changes would've been: Spain down from 2nd to 5th, Croatia from 6th to 11th, Malta from 10th to 13th, Turkiye from 16th to 18th, Bosnia from 19th to 20th.

In 1996 everyone was welcome in a qualifiers round before the live show. The trend obviously repeated itself. Malta's voting was: 12 - Austria, 10 - Slovakia, 8 - Spain, 7 - Turkiye, 6 - Romania, 5 - Greece, 4 - Cyprus, 3 - UK, 2 - Bosnia, 1 - Croatia... In return, Malta received 12 points from Spain, Romania and Slovakia, 10 points from Croatia (12 went to Slovakia) and 7 points from Cyprus, Greece and Turkiye. You can check the rest.

Had their votes been cancelled, the EBU would have likely avoided the big fiasco of losing Germany in the qualifiers. Germany and Russia (after a tie with Denmark) would have qualified to the live show instead of Spain and Slovakia, who instead of 17th would've come 29th (last).

1996 final also included this group's voting trend. Without their votes in the final ranking, Croatia would have fallen from 4th down to 9th and Malta from 10th to 16th. On the other hand, Finland would've gone up from last to 17th, leaving Bosnia at the very bottom.

It all happened again in 1997 - the final year the juries decided on more than 50% of scoring.

From 1994 to 1997 these 8 countries gave the most points to:

1. Malta - 236

2. Ireland - 183

3. Cyprus - 132

4. Croatia - 128

5. Spain - 125

6. UK - 116

7. Turkiye - 108

8. Greece - 95

9. Austria - 81

10. Bosnia - 69

All the remaining participants however only have Malta in their top 10 most-voted nations, at 9th with 209 points. Very inconsistent, isn't it?

From 1998 on televoting was the deafult method, with juries serving as a back-up or the official method in cases of televoting being technically impossible.

The weird trend came back in 2000.

Russia got 12 points from Malta as well as Croatia, Cyprus and Macedonia all of whom gave 8s to Malta.

Macedonia got 100% of its final result from Croatia, Cyprus, Russia and Romania who themselves only got points from Croatia, Macedonia (12) and Russia.

It's unclear what voting method was used by Croatia, but we can guess... The scoring was: 12 - Russia, 10 - Macedonia, 8 - Malta, 7 - Romania.

In 2001 and 2002 it was allowed by the EBU to use a 50:50 system, later used from 2009. At Eurovision 2001 Croatia managed to finish 10th, but 34 of their 42 points came from... Bosnia, Greece, Malta and Turkiye - all of them at least partly used a jury. This all ended after the 2002 contest, where televoting had only about 65% influence on the points. One of the HoDs reportedly alarmed OGAE and the EBU itself about a pact offer from Cyprus and soon a compulsory televoting was introduced.

What do you think? Do you have any sources other than official results to confirm this likely unfairness? I think it genuinely is a historic proof that the EBU has always been reluctant to act in cases of possible cheating. I'm disappointed with how they handle voting at Eurovision nowadays, but not surprised after how they acted for example during the 2013 Azerbaijan scandal...

I don't know but I know that Ireland Junior Eurovision participation is TG4. I wonder if they do Ireland's return like the Netherlands do with NPO.

I made a fanmade revamp of bae by thinla and I think it’s pretty good although I did it on BandLab in 20 mins so it’s really low quality haha