You need an outstanding song, an extraordinary performance and a popular tune to win the Eurovision Song Contest.

Sweden’s Loreen united all these three points with her song Euphoria, which reminds a lot of various late hits by David Guetta, in this year’s edition of the contest.

But even the rest of the top five songs were special on their own, be it the Russian grandmothers, with their funny and extremely simple dance song, or the musical soul of the Balkan from Serbia, another highly emotional contribution from the host country, or the Albanian lament with its powerful vocal rollercoaster.

Even three Big Five nations, namely Germany, Italy and France, proved once more that they take the contest seriously.

Many people persist in making the simple argumentation that only neighbouring voting could lead to these results. But neighbouring voting has been in the contest since its early years and, nevertheless, any country participating has managed to obtain excellent results, including Malta with its various second and third places. By the way, all such results were secured since the Eastern European countries were able to participate.

Again, I was deeply impressed by the high quality of songs, stage performances and the singers’ voices.

But I must also announce my surprise over the Maltese package. Kurt Calleja’s This Is The Night impressed me much more on the Eurovision stage than it did during the local festival in February, especially his dance steps, which suited the audience in Europe. I got that feedback from several Eurovision followers. A number of tunes that appeared to be very similar to the winning song from Sweden also raised expectations.

But I have to say, too, that, once again, the Maltese contribution was nothing to really stick out from the rest. I think that the people responsible for Malta’s Eurovision Song Contest appearance have to approach this event, which attracts over 100 million TV spectators worldwide, with more motivation and with a stronger will to achieve a good result.

I am sorry for Malta’s 21st place out of 26. Having seen Mr Calleja’s performance on Saturday I would have ranked him clearly among the top 10.

All in all, I think that the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 was another great event to watch and to enjoy a variety of excellent song packages.

The situation of the Azerbaijani opposition and the human rights faded out in the contest but should not be forgotten. Therefore, I would like to close this letter with the comment from the German points presenter Anke Engelke: “Europe is watching you”.