new "Big Four" group of countries was created to ensure the financial viability of the event, and was prompted by a number of poor placements in previous years for some of these countries, which if repeated in 1999 could have resulted in those countries being eliminated.

Finland, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Switzerland were therefore excluded from participating in the 1999 contest, to make way for the return of Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark,