text: Besides slight modifications to the voting system and other contest rules, no fundamental changes to the contest's format were introduced until the early 1990s, when events in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s resulted in a growing interest from new countries in the former Eastern Bloc, particularly following the merger of the Eastern European rival OIRT network with the EBU in 1993.
  Pre-selections and relegation
  29 countries registered to take part in the 1993 contest, a figure the EBU considered unable to fit reasonably into a single TV show. A pre-selection method was subsequently introduced for the first time in order to reduce the number of competing entries, with seven countries in Central and Eastern Europe participating in Kvalifikacija za Millstreet, held in Ljubljana, Slovenia one month before the event. Following a vote amongst the seven competing countries, ,  and  were chosen to head to the contest in Millstreet, Ireland, whilst , ,  and  were forced to wait another year before being allowed to compete. A new relegation system was introduced for entry into the 1994 contest, with the lowest-placed countries being forced to sit out the following year's event to be replaced by countries which had not competed in the previous contest. The bottom seven countries in 1993 were required to miss the following year's contest, and were replaced by the four unsuccessful countries in Kvalifikacija za Millstreet and new entries from ,  and .