Tens of millions of euros for a controversial music contest

Eurovision, the highly controversial European music contest, continues to attract interest and consume a lot of money. Voters in the Swiss city of Basel have approved funding of almost 40 million euros to host the annual Eurovision 2025 television show in their city. Provisional results of the vote show that 66.4% of voters in the northern Swiss city are in favor of using taxpayers' money - 34.96 million Swiss francs (37.4 million euros) - to host the show. Without the funding from the host city, the televised event, which attracts a huge global audience, would have been significantly truncated. Switzerland won Eurovision 2024 in Sweden, with the victory of non-binary artist Nemo, and is set to host the 2025 event in May, in this city on the border with France and Germany. Authorities hope to obtain 60 million Swiss francs in immediate benefits. The Federal Democratic Union (UDF), a small party that defends "timeless Christian values", launched a referendum to denounce a "real waste" of public money. The party, described as ultra-conservative by the Swiss press, also presented security and moral arguments. If the city's contribution had been rejected, the ten-day event would have been reduced to "a big Saturday night TV show", with no public events outside the main stage, warned the head of the Eurovision 2025 communications department, Edi Estermann, AFP reports. "We are a city of art, of the visual arts, but also of music. "This is still very important for our city," pleaded Andrea Strahm, a lawyer and member of the Basel Parliament.