European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has sanctioned the national broadcaster of Bosnia & Herzegovina, BHRT, due to their debt of over 3 million Euros, accumulated over the last couple of years.

As of today, none of the theree channels national broadcaster of Bosnia & Herzegovina – BHRT, FTV and RTRS, have access to the Eurovision news exchange. A warning was previously issued to the broadcaster about the accumulated debt, with the threat that the broadcast of the European Championships in football 2016 would be banned, but the country’s Government was supposed to find a new way of financing the broadcaster, which still hasn’t happened.

BHRT came into a situation where making their own programmes is almost impossible, and there are lots of rumors going around that this national broadcaster might be completely shut down very soon due to the lack of funds.

Even though Romania was forced out of Eurovision a couple of weeks before the start of the rehearsals due to the huge debt towards the EBU, BHRT were allowed to participate this May in Stockholm with a similar situation, but with a smaller debt. Deen, Dalal, Ana Rucner and Jala represented Bosnia & Herzegovina in Stockholm, failed to qualify for the Grand Final with their song “Ljubav je”. Bosnia & Herzegovina is not going to take part in Kiev next year, and whether any future participation is going to be possible, time will tell.