Luxembourg: Another Eurovision without participation.

Luxembourg’s national broadcaster, RTL, confirmed that Luxembourg will not participate at the forthcoming 2016 Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm.

So far a total of 18 countries have confirmed their participation at the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest; Greece, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland, France, Ireland and Belarus. Luxembourg joins the list of countries, like Andorra and Monaco, that have confirmed their absence from the next Eurovision song contest.

The Luxembourg’s national broadcaster justifies its decision of not returning by outlining the interest of the channel mostly in the news section than music and entertainment shows. In addition, due to  the low budget of the channel a participation in the contest will be  a financial and organizational strain on the channel.

And all this would have been insignificant for a tiny European landlocked country if this country wasn’t one of the found members of EBU that participated in the very first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956 in Lugano. Luxembourg has achieved an admirable total of five victories in the contest (1961,1965,1972,1973, 1983) However the low placing in the contest and the low TV rating in the country has probably kept it many years away from the Eurovision Stage. Luxembourg was last seen in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1993 in Millstreet when Modern Times represented the country with the song Donnez Moi Une Chance De Te Dire and achieved a 20th placing.