It was very unusual that the Secretary General of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), Swede Martin Österdahl, awarded the points on behalf of three juries in the final on Saturday.

Allegedly there were "technical problems" so that a connection to the countries could not be established.

Late on Saturday evening it became known that there had been "irregularities" in the second semi-final, which affected the jury votes in six countries.

Peter Philipp Schmitt

Editor in the department "Germany and the World".

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But not only the second semi-final was affected, the final was also affected, as the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the ESC, confirmed on Sunday.

Accordingly, "irregular voting patterns" were found in the results of six countries.

The juries were excluded and "aggregated substitute results" were used for this purpose.

These are based on the results of other countries with similar voting behavior in the past, as reported by the EBU.

Affected countries surprised

According to EBU information, the juries are from the following countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino.

The Romanian broadcaster TVR 1 was surprised in a statement.

The jurors voted under the supervision of a notary and according to EBU rules.

The EBU also did not inform the broadcaster in advance, but simply did not switch on the show to the moderator Eda Marcus, who was supposed to announce the jury points for Romania on Sunday night.

"We would like to highlight that the Romanian jury gave the highest score to the artist from Moldova," TVR 1 announced.

Österdahl had awarded Ukraine's twelve points from Romania in the final.

The Azerbaijani broadcaster İctimai Televiziya also resisted the exclusion of its jury on Sunday.

In a television program, the presenter Narmin Salmanova, who was also not able to watch the final as planned, announced that there had been no technical problems.

However, she was astonished to find that Marin Österdahl awarded completely different points than she had on her slip.

Accordingly, the jurors had awarded the twelve points from Azerbaijan to Ukraine, but the country only received six from the ESC Secretary General.

The top score went to the United Kingdom instead.

The twelve points from Georgia, which Helen Kalandadze was supposed to read out for her home country and award to Ukraine in the final, also went to Sam Ryder from Britain.

Kalush Orchestra remains winner

Those responsible from Poland and San Marino have not yet commented, but the Montenegrin broadcaster RTCG at least called for clarification.

The EBU wants to investigate the events further.

Any possible manipulation of the votes is taken very seriously.

The EBU also has the right not to evaluate suspicious votes, regardless of whether they affect the outcome of the vote or not, it said.

Despite this, the victory of Kalush Orchestra from Ukraine remains unquestioned.

The band's lead with their song "Stefania" was 165 points over second-placed Sam Ryder.

However, the Briton ("Space Man") was just seven points ahead of the Spaniard Chanel ("SloMo").

It remains to be seen whether there will be any subsequent changes.

In the past week there have also been massive hacker attacks on several Italian government websites, including the Ministry of Defence, the Senate and the National Health Institute.

As the Italian police confirmed on Sunday, the hackers also targeted the ESC's official website.

Accordingly, they tried in vain to penetrate the systems during the first semi-final on Tuesday and during the finals on Saturday and Sunday.

The pro-Russian hacker group Killnet claimed responsibility for the attacks on government websites last Wednesday.

The experts also attribute the attacks on the ESC pages to this group.