Basel, a quaint riverside city in northern Switzerland, on Friday won the right to host next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, the high-camp international singing competition.
To many Basel residents, the news, which Eurovision’s organizers announced in a release, was a cause for celebration: Next May, the city would have a moment in the international spotlight.
Yet some lawmakers in Switzerland had an altogether different reaction. To them, Eurovision is not a fun spectacle; it is a waste of money and “a celebration of evil” that has no place in their country.
Members of the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland, a conservative Christian party, are campaigning for a referendum to stop Basel’s government contributing tens of millions of dollars toward Eurovision’s running costs.
Samuel Kullmann, the lawmaker leading the campaign, said that Eurovision had a “cultural agenda” that threatened Christian values. That included, he added, allowing musicians to promote Satanism onstage.
At this year’s Eurovision, Kullmann said, entrants included Bambie Thug, a heavy metal act representing Ireland, who sang standing in a pentagram. “People might say it’s metal or Gothic music, but they’re ignoring the obvious,” Kullmann said. “It was a celebration of evil.”
Under Switzerland’s system of direct democracy, members of the public can challenge any local, regional or national government decision if they secure the backing of enough citizens to force a referendum. Normally, those referendums deal with matters of public administration, or more weighty issues of culture and identity, than Eurovision. In 2009, for instance, Swiss citizens voted overwhelmingly to ban the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, after a campaign against overt symbols of Islam.
Kullmann said his party would challenge Basel’s plan to allocate up to 35 million Swiss francs, or $41 million, in public funding toward Eurovision’s running costs. He needs about 2,000 Basel residents to sign a petition to force a public vote, he said, but he added that may prove a challenge. Although it has two members in Switzerland’s Parliament, the Federal Democratic Union has only a tiny following in Basel. In the last election, in 2023, the party had fewer than 300 voters in the city.
Switzerland had won the right to host Eurovision after Nemo, a Swiss singer, triumphed at this year’s event with “The Code,” a catchy track in which the nonbinary performer sang and rapped about their journey to realizing their gender identity.
Ever since, there has been hand-wringing in the Swiss news media over the potential cost of staging the weeklong event. Kullmann said his party would prefer that cities cut taxes rather than spend money on TV shows.
Some lawmakers from larger right-leaning parties have backed the Federal Democratic Union campaign, including members of the center-right Swiss People’s Party, which has the most members in the Swiss Parliament. However, Pascal Messerli, that party’s president in Basel, said in an email Friday that he would not campaign for a referendum over Eurovision. Party members want the competition in Basel because it will bring tourists to the city, he said.
In July, when Basel was campaigning to become the host, the editor in chief of the city’s main newspaper, Marcel Rohr, wrote in an editorial that the debate over the issue was “brimming with small-mindedness.” Eurovision is a huge opportunity for Basel, he said. “There could not be any better advertisement for a Swiss city in 2025,” he added.
And even if a referendum looks unlikely to succeed, Eurovision’s organizers are not ignoring the threat. Edi Estermann, a spokesman for SRG SSR, the Swiss national broadcaster that will produce the show, said that the referendum campaign “brings with it a certain amount of planning uncertainty.”
If the campaign to prevent government funding were to succeed, he added, next year’s Eurovision party “would have to be greatly reduced.”
Still, Estermann said, many of the referendum supporters’ complaints about what happens onstage did not hold weight, such as accusations of Satanism. “These performances should not always be taken so seriously,” he said.
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