Romania’s Head of Delegation Iuliana Marciuc has said that she doesn’t understand why the EBU cancelled Romania’s jury vote, or why the 12 points that the country awarded to Moldova went to Ukraine instead.

On Sunday, Marciuc told News programme Telejurnal that the Romanian jury had followed all the rules set by the EBU, and were taken aback when their result was cancelled. Iuliana said:

“I called Bucharest, I asked to be given the score, because up to that moment I didn’t know it and I asked for details about how the jury was organised in the studio.”

“I learned that it was organised with all the rules imposed by the EBU, with the presence of a notary mandatory, [who arrived] in the studio before the jury members. The members of the jury could not communicate with each other. They could not talk. Each person signed his jury sheet. They did not even see the final result of the jury. We don’t know what the problem is with [our jury vote].”

But on Saturday night, during the grand final, the European Broadcasting Union sent out a vague statement which said it had found “irregular voting patterns” detected among six unnamed countries after second rehearsals for the second semi-final. Their jury votes were cancelled and replaced with “a substitute aggregated result for each country concerned for both the Second-Semi Final and the Grand Final (calculated based on the results of other countries with similar voting records).”

It’s since been reported by the EBU that the six countries in question are Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, and San Marino.

Earlier, on Sunday morning, Romanian television posted the following statement:

“However, we were surprised to find that the result of the Romanian jury’s vote was not taken into the final ranking, with the organizers assigning another set of scores to the competitors in the final, on behalf of our country’s jury. We specify that the jury in Romania decided to grant a maximum score to the representatives of Moldova.”

“In the message, Romania was not explicitly nominated on the list of the six countries, nor did it receive, at the end of the second semifinal, which specifies the identification of ‘irregular voting patterns’,

The person appointed by TVR to manage communication with the EBU for the national jury vote noted the discrepancy between the scores transmitted the previous day, after the show for the jury, and the notes EBU announced during the event that it will introduce them to the rankings, as from the national jury.

At the same time, the presenter Eda Marcus was not allowed to enter the official broadcast to communicate the results, as TVR had previously agreed with the organizers, according to procedures. Furthermore, during Saturday, the TVR polling officer attended two teleconferences with organizers to establish rules for presentation/positioning/reading of Eda Marcus. He also participated in the rehearsal of transmitting the jury result, without receiving any communication regarding any suspicions or the organizer’s intention to make changes to the Romanian jurors’ vote.”

“So the rules were changed during the game without the participants being notified beforehand, knowing during the broadcast that some votes of the national judges were modified by the organizer.”

“In this out of the ordinary context, which surprised us unpleasantly, TVR asked the organizers of ESC to provide us, officially, the concrete reasons why they replaced the score of the jury in Romania with a calculated ‘substitute’…Based on the response we will be sent, TVR reserves the right to take action to correct the situation.”

“Despite this situation, Romania’s representatives fully deserved their participation in the final, wrs provided an impeccable moment at every appearance on stage, receiving very good reactions in the hall, online or in meetings le with the journalists.”