The debate that you won’t be watching

On 10 May, Europe’s main television stations will broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest – the annual song competition staged by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

The EBU has had less interest in another of its offerings, to be staged five days later, a first-of- its-kind political debate between candidates for the presidency of the European Commission.

The EBU’s members are almost all national public broadcasters in Europe, and the working assumption in the European Parliament was that the debate would be aired on mainstream, but second-tier channels. As things are turning out, nearly half of member states will not air the debate at all.

In Germany, the debate will be aired on a little-watched ‘special interest’ station called Phoenix. In the UK, the debate will air on BBC Parliament – the British equivalent of C-Span in the United States, which shows live committee hearings and parliamentary sessions. None of the French broadcasters has agreed to carry the debate and so it will instead be aired on TV5 – a global, French-language broadcaster. Spain and Italy will air the broadcast on their 24-hour news stations.

Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia are not showing the debate on television. Swedish broadcaster SVT will not air the debate live, but will show a recorded version at some point before the election. With neither the Dutch nor the Flemish broadcasters agreeing to air it, there will be no Dutch-language broadcast.

The debate will be aired in two non-EU countries – Canada and Ukraine. There’s no accounting for taste.