Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022

Selecția Națională 2022 was the national final organised by TVR in order to select Romania's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022.[8] The competition consisted of two shows: a semi-final featuring twenty songs and a final featuring ten songs to be held between 5 February and 5 March 2022.[9] The two shows were televised on TVR1, TVR HD, TVRi as well as online via the broadcaster's streaming service TVR+ and YouTube. The two shows are also being broadcast in Moldova via the channel TVR Moldova.[10] An additional three shows, titled Drumul spre Torino (Road to Turin) and hosted by Ilinca who represented Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017, were aired on TVR1 between 5 and 7 February 2022 in order to give insight on the competing acts.[11]

TVR opened a submission period for artists and composers to submit their entries between 26 November 2021 and 19 December 2021. The broadcaster received 94 submissions within the submission deadline.[12] A jury panel consisting of Alexandra Ungureanu (singer), Ozana Barabancea (opera singer, actress), Randi (singer, producer), Cristian Faur (composer, producer) and Adrian Romcescu (composer, conductor) reviewed the received submissions on 21 and 22 December 2021, with each juror on the committee rating each song between 1 (lowest) and 10 (highest) based on criteria such as the melodic harmony and structure of the song, the orchestral arrangement, originality and stylistic diversity of the composition and sound and voice quality.[13] After the combination of the jury votes, the top 45 entries that scored the highest, one per artist that entered with more than one song, were selected for the national final. The competing entries were announced on 23 December 2021. Among the selected competing artists are Ciro de Luca, who represented Romania in 2007 as part of Todomondo, and Cezar Ouatu, who previously represented Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2013.[14][15]

On 28 December 2021, TVR announced that "Malere" performed by E-an-na would also participate in the competition following a successful appeal made by the performers. "Best of Me" performed by Alex Parker, Erik Frank and Bastien was withdrawn from the competition on the same day and replaced with Parker and Bastien's second song "All This Love".[16] "Hypnotized" performed by Barbara Tešija, was withdrawn from the competition on 5 February 2022.[17] On 9 February, "That Way" performed by Fabi was withdrawn from the semi-final due to Fabi testing positive for COVID-19.[18][19]

The semi-finals took place on 5–10 and 12 February 2022. Forty-five songs competed in the first semi-final and twenty qualified to the second semi-final. A jury panel first selected fifteen songs to advance, and a public online vote which took place on the Eurovision Romania Facebook page on 9 and 10 February 2022 then selected an additional five qualifiers from the remaining thirty entries.[20] The twenty qualifying entries were announced on 10 February during the TVR evening news broadcast.[10][21][22] The second semi-final took place at the TVR studios in Bucharest, hosted by Anca Mazilu and Bogdan Stănescu with Ilinca hosting segments from the green room.[23] Twenty songs competed and the jury panel selected ten songs to qualify to the final.[24][25] The members of the jury panel that voted during the semi-finals were: Alexandra Ungureanu, Ozana Barabancea, Randi, Cristian Faur and Adrian Romcescu.[13]

The final took place on 5 March 2022 at the TVR Studios in Bucharest, hosted by Eda Marcus and Aurelian Temișan with Ilinca hosting segments from the green room.[27] Ten songs competed and the winner, "Llámame" performed by WRS, was determined by the combination of the votes from the jury panel and public televoting. Each member of the jury voted by assigning scores from 1–8, 10 and 12 points to their preferred songs, with the juries awarding 290 points in total. The viewer vote was assigned by dividing the votes received by each song by the number of votes of the song that gained the most viewer votes. This number was then multiplied by 12 and rounded to two decimal places. For example, if song A received the most viewer votes and song B received 10% of song A's votes, then song A would be awarded 12 televoting points and song B would be awarded 1.2 televoting points.[14] The members of the jury panel that voted during the final were: Alexandra Ungureanu, Ozana Barabancea, Randi, Cristian Faur and Adrian Romcescu. In addition to the performances of the competing entries, the interval acts featured performances by 2016 Eurovision winner Jamala, who performed her winning song "1944", as well as seven 2022 Eurovision entrants: Intelligent Music Project (Bulgaria), Zdob și Zdub and Frații Advahov (Moldova), Vladana (Montenegro), Andrea (North Macedonia), Ronela Hajati (Albania), We Are Domi (Czech Republic) and Stefan (Estonia).[28][29]

In a statement released during the broadcast of the grand final, the EBU revealed that six countries, including Romania, were found to have irregular jury voting patterns during the second semi-final. Consequently, these countries were given substitute aggregated jury scores for both the second semi-final and the grand final (shown above), calculated from the corresponding jury scores of countries with historically similar voting patterns as determined by the pots for the semi-final allocation draw held in January.[36][37] Their televoting scores were unaffected. The Flemish broadcaster VRT later reported that the juries involved had made agreements to vote for each others' entries to secure qualification to the grand final.[38]

During the broadcast of the final, Romania's votes were read by the EBU's Executive Supervisor, Martin Österdahl, instead of the scheduled spokesperson, Eda Marcus.[39] This was attributed to connection difficulties during the voting, however the Azerbaijani broadcaster İTV, whose jury had also been identified as showing irregular voting patterns, released a statement implying that this was instead due to their refusal to present the calculated aggregate scores.[40][41]

On 19 May, the EBU released a further statement clarifying the voting irregularities identified in the second semi-final. This confirmed that the six countries involved had consistently scored each others' entries disproportionately highly in the second semi-final: the Romanian jury, as well as the juries from Azerbaijan, Georgia and San Marino, had each ranked the other five countries' entries as their top five, proving beyond statistical coincidence that they had colluded to achieve a higher placing. This prompted the suspension of Romania's intended jury scores (shown below) in favour of the EBU's calculated aggregate scores, presented above.[42]

The Romanian broadcaster TVR subsequently released a press statement revealing the Romanian jury's intended votes for the grand final, which had also been suspended.[43] The statement went on to criticise the EBU for their communication and also suggested that other juries had participated in separate incidents of vote manipulation, although this was strongly refuted by the EBU. TVR concluded their statement by threatening the future participation of Romania in the contest as a result of the response to the incident.[44] On 29 July, Romanian news outlet Impact.ro reported that TVR had dropped all objections towards the EBU regarding the exclusion of the Romanian jury.[45]

Romania's suspended jury results (Semi-final 2)[42] Score Country 12 points  San Marino 10 points  Poland 8 points  Montenegro 7 points  Azerbaijan 6 points  Georgia 5 points  Australia 4 points  Estonia 3 points  North Macedonia 2 points  Serbia 1 point  Ireland

Romania's suspended jury results (Final)[43] Score Country 12 points  Moldova 10 points  Greece 8 points  Poland 7 points  Netherlands 6 points  Azerbaijan 5 points  Australia 4 points  Italy 3 points  Spain 2 points  Finland 1 point  Lithuania

Detailed voting results of Romania's suspended vote (Semi-final 2)[42]

Draw	Country	Juror 1	Juror 2	Juror 3	Juror 4	Juror 5	Rank	Points
01	Finland	9	11	14	13	16	12
02	Israel	8	15	13	15	13	13
03	Serbia	16	8	10	5	7	9	2
04	Azerbaijan	6	4	7	8	1	4	7
05	Georgia	4	3	4	14	5	5	6
06	Malta	12	17	16	11	9	15
07	San Marino	1	1	2	2	2	1	12
08	Australia	5	12	5	9	6	6	5
09	Cyprus	17	16	11	7	17	11
10	Ireland	7	10	6	12	12	10	1
11	North Macedonia	14	7	9	4	10	8	3
12	Estonia	13	6	8	6	8	7	4
13	Romania
14	Poland	3	5	1	1	3	2	10
15	Montenegro	2	2	3	3	4	3	8
16	Belgium	15	14	12	10	11	14
17	Sweden	10	9	15	17	15	16
18	Czech Republic	11	13	17	16	14	17

Detailed voting results of Romania's suspended vote (Final)[43]

Draw	Country	Juror 1	Juror 2	Juror 3	Juror 4	Juror 5	Rank	Points
01	Czech Republic	20	16	16	23	15	24
02	Romania
03	Portugal	14	23	12	13	4	11
04	Finland	11	11	23	4	20	9	2
05	Switzerland	24	10	11	24	24	22
06	France	12	12	24	10	12	19
07	Norway	21	5	13	11	16	15
08	Armenia	19	20	4	22	10	14
09	Italy	18	7	14	6	9	7	4
10	Spain	5	19	6	17	17	8	3
11	Netherlands	16	4	7	9	2	4	7
12	Ukraine	22	21	15	18	5	17
13	Germany	13	13	20	7	18	18
14	Lithuania	4	24	10	12	23	10	1
15	Azerbaijan	7	14	8	8	8	5	6
16	Belgium	17	15	17	21	11	23
17	Greece	2	1	3	3	3	2	10
18	Iceland	23	8	18	16	13	21
19	Moldova	1	2	1	1	1	1	12
20	Sweden	6	18	21	20	22	20
21	Australia	10	22	5	5	19	6	5
22	United Kingdom	8	9	9	15	14	12
23	Poland	3	6	2	2	7	3	8
24	Serbia	15	3	22	19	21	13
25	Estonia	9	17	19	14	6	16

The EBU published these detailed results for a short time on 13 July 2022.[34][35]

Detailed voting results from Romania (Semi-final 2)[34] Draw Country Jury Televote Rank Points Rank Points 01  Finland 7 4 7 4 02  Israel 10 1 13 03  Serbia 15 2 10 04  Azerbaijan 8 3 14 05  Georgia 13 17 06  Malta 12 12 07  San Marino 9 2 9 2 08  Australia 2 10 8 3 09  Cyprus 16 4 7 10  Ireland 14 11 11  North Macedonia 6 5 15 12  Estonia 4 7 3 8 13  Romania 14  Poland 11 10 1 15  Montenegro 17 16 16  Belgium 5 6 6 5 17  Sweden 1 12 1 12 18  Czech Republic 3 8 5 6

Detailed voting results from Romania (Final)[35] Draw Country Jury Televote Rank Points Rank Points 01  Czech Republic 20 22 02  Romania 03  Portugal 4 7 19 04  Finland 16 15 05  Switzerland 6 5 21 06  France 22 10 1 07  Norway 12 9 2 08  Armenia 17 18 09  Italy 7 4 7 4 10  Spain 10 1 3 8 11  Netherlands 8 3 17 12  Ukraine 1 12 2 10 13  Germany 19 20 14  Lithuania 14 12 15  Azerbaijan 13 23 16  Belgium 15 16 17  Greece 9 2 14 18  Iceland 18 24 19  Moldova 24 1 12 20  Sweden 2 10 5 6 21  Australia 5 6 13 22  United Kingdom 3 8 8 3 23  Poland 21 11 24  Serbia 23 4 7 25  Estonia 11 6 5