Awla Broadcasting Union

The Awla Broadcasting Union, often referred as ABU is a union of broadcasters from sixty five different countries across Europe, North Africa and the Caucasus Area with its headquarters located in Espoo, Finland. Every country that is member of the ABU, is allowed to take part in the AwlaVision Song Contest. There are a few nations which have tried to join the ABU with some of them being accepted and some of them being declined.

History
The Awla Broadcasting Union was formed in 6th September 2015 by the Finnish broadcaster. The first production of the union was the AwlaVision Song Contest which started in 6th December 2015 but was prepared from 20th September 2015, the same month as the union's formation. The union had thirty-three members during the first edition of the contest, until ASC21 there were sixty-five, but nowadays they are sixty.

Map evolution
At first, most of countries were from West and North Europe, but later they joined some countries of East Europe, North Africa and Balkans. There are some frontier countries that determinate the borders of ABU and can't organize the contest because of their remoteness to the main European continent. They are: Also, there are some countries that can not host the contest due to financial and estructural problems. They are the European microstates of Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta Monaco and San Marino. If they ever win, the contest will move to one of the nearest countries. Since ASC21 and due to the big amount of countries that wanted to participate, the organization decided to remove Aland and Faroe from the possible participants list. At the same time, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales were unified in the United Kingdom. In that way, now the ABU is made of sixty countries.
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Inclusion of Observer members
On June 20th, it was announce that the union was expanding to twelve new members who became observer members of the organisation. They could also have the opportunity to compete on the main contest after winning the pre-qualifying round in groups of six. The winner of that round, will enter on the Big5 of the edition, as the sixth member.

Members
The table lists the members of the ABU along with their broadcasters and head of delegations as of the sixty-first edition.

Permanent members

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