Balancing the grey suits and ties with a touch of glamour and glitz

Date: 06/06/1996

THERE are only two kinds of EU member state - those which have won the Eurovision song contest and those which have not.

Of those which have, Ireland reigns supreme - a record seven wins by unqualified majority vote since the initiative was launched nearly 50 years ago, and never an empty chair in the place.

The first EU ministerial working day after this year's electrifying song contest found the Irish striding around Brussels, preening their feathers.

You should have seen the grin all over farm minister Ivan Yates' face. He told a tense Agriculture Council: “I believe that with more effort we can all help resolve the beef crisis,” but we knew what he really meant. What he meant was: “We won the Eurovision song contest again, so there! Stick that on your music score and put a libretto to it!”

Ignore all the moaning from Dublin about the staggering cost of having to host the flaming contest once again just because they are the best. They are flattered really. They are just being disingenuous and trying to make people feel better.

For whatever it costs to invite every Tom, Dick and Harry's musical crème de la crème to Dublin the next time around, the free publicity is priceless and the tourist spin-off massive.

It's even better than an EU presidency summit, and Ireland's got one of those later this year, too. Being Irish right now is like having a birthday, Christmas and a lottery win all rolled into one.

Billions watch the Eurovision bash all over the world. Half a billion anyway. Entire nations stay in and grip the edges of their seats as the voting of the Croatian jury crackles through the static.

This is a Europe people can understand and in which they can participate. You cannot hum along to the European Union, but you can to the Eurovision Song Contest. You can boom-bang-a-bang and tra-la-la too. The song contest is so popular that everyone has to pretend they do not actually watch it. And everybody, even those who really do not watch it, is desperate to know the result.

You can't say that about your average Euro-summit now, can you?

No you can't, and in these troubled times there is much to be said for a merger of the two, a Eurovision Union, the best of both worlds, full of glitz and glamour, a spiritually uplifting experience in which the next crisis over economic convergence is offset by an a capella quartet from Transylvania.

What we need in these vexatious days of strife and torment is an all-singing, all-dancing federation of nation states in which the winner takes all but gets to pay the bill for the next sparkling occasion.

In the Eurovision Union of the future, entries will be restricted because experience shows that the numbers taking part have got to be contained. Otherwise things get out of hand, the show goes on too long and voting takes for ever.

The Eurovision Union will abandon grand notions of enlargement to 25, 28 or 30 members. Instead it will impose a ceiling each year, limiting entries to a maximum of about 20.

Others will want to join, naturally, but they will all face annual screening. They will have to prove they are up to the mark. And if they are out of tune, if they sound any bum notes, they will be sent away until the next year, when they can try again.

The auditions for would-be member states will be tough. A panel of carefully-chosen selectors will listen to a sample of their best numbers and decide which entrants go forward to the Eurovision Union for the next 12 months. The panel will be especially trained to weed out those who cannot keep a steady rhythm, who are flat or sharp or in any other way discordant.

That should cut out the deadwood and keep the new EU on its toes.

After all, why should membership be for ever? Why shouldn't it be based on continual reassessment, with a knees-up summit once every few months and a commentary by Terry Wogan in all the singing languages?

Everyone complains that the current Eurovision song contest is just politics disguised as show business, but nobody has ever accused the European Union of being show business disguised as politics.

And that is the problem. Where in the EU are the sequins and flares to balance the grey suits? Where are the strobe lights, the applause, the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd?

There will still be tears before bedtime and losers as well as winners, even in this new Eurotopia, but there is always the chance of victory.

Remember that Norway gained a humiliating nul points in 1978 in the song contest, but at least it took part, with none of the drama that has surrounded Oslo's failed attempts to join the European Union - and this year Norway came second.

Don't forget, either, that Abba failed to get their songs through the preliminary heats three times before breaking through for Sweden with “Waterloo” in 1974. And for those who think this song contest is just frothy meaningless stuff, just remember that Abba went on to become a stunning export earner grossing more than Volvo, an economic achievement that the treasuries of the EU and the boffins in DGII can only stand around and gawp at.

Yes, there will always be hope in the new Eurovision Union, and for that we must thank Italy, a far-sighted nation which paved the way for this enlightened merger between the EU and the Eurovision Song Contest.

We all know how Italy put Messina on the tourist map by cleverly engineering its place in history as the birthplace of the modern Union, but how many realise that by then, the Italians had already also founded the song contest, having quietly arranged the San Remo song festival in 1950?

It was a shrewd businesses move, a classic case of not putting all your eggs in one basket.

If the Messina deal fell through, there was always San Remo, and vice versa. As it was, both gambles paid off, but of the two, the biggest show in town is the one which kicked off in San Remo in 1950 and which, in 1956, turned into the contest we know and cringe at today.

At that stage, it was just seven nations singing two songs each. It is now 23, singing one song each. The EU started as six nations, all singing the same tune and is now bidding to become a couple of dozen countries, each singing several songs, all at the same time.

The case for a merger, ladies and gentlemen, is overwhelming.