Brussels, 31/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - EU culture ministers are relatively happy with the proposed revision of the audio-visual media services directive. In view of the discussion they had on Tuesday 31 May, the main difficulties would appear to be with quotas for European works, accessibility and advertising rules.
On 25 May, the Commission proposed rules that would bring greater flexibility to the rules on advertising, create more of a level playing field between the traditional media and the others and encourage creativity in Europe (see EUROPE 11558). According to Belgium, this proposal provides an “excellent basis”. Germany says it is an “excellent proposal”. For Luxembourg, it is a “balanced modernisation”. Greece sees it as a “very positive starting point”.
As ministers took their turn to speak, however, a number of reservations were raised. These can be grouped into three categories.
Introduction of quotas for European work. The Commission wants on-demand (VOD) providers to support European works, just as traditional providers do. The proposal would require at least 20% of their catalogue to be European works and would have them make a financial contribution to the development of local cinema (through direct investment or taxes). In response, Finland, Denmark and Sweden wondered whether it was worth putting in place quotas of this sort. France, which applies a 60% quota inside its borders, took the view that the Commission proposal did not go far enough. Spain, Romania and Poland, meanwhile, gave their backing to the proposal. “Poland already applies quotas and that has not increased administrative costs”, the Polish minister said. Croatia even went as far as to “call for further quotas to promote cultural and linguistic diversity”. Responding to these comments, Digital Economy and Society Commissioner Gunther Oettinger pointed out that the proposal left it open to member states to set a higher threshold if they so wished.
Relaxing advertising rules. The proposal would allow television channels to give 20% of their daily broadcasting time to adverts, and more in the course of a single hour, and to have advert breaks every 20 minutes rather than every half hour as at present. Going around the table, France, Latvia and Romania opposed this change while the representative of the German Länder expressed the opposite viewpoint. “This would cut red tape. But it is quite a leap to go from there to saying that we could have half adverts half programme. This would be technically and legally possible but we believe the market will self-regulate. Otherwise the viewer will just switch over”, said Oettinger.
Removing accessibility provisions. The new proposal contains no accessibility requirement, on the grounds that this is now a matter for the accessibility act. This is not to the liking of Belgium, France, Denmark, Sweden and Austria, which believe that sectoral rules are necessary. Commissioner Oettinger indicated that he was not against the introduction of specific measures in the revision proposal.
Several countries also highlighted the approach adopted by the Commission on platforms. France felt that the term “co-regulation” needed to be defined. Germany said it feared the approach was not sufficiently robust, whereas Estonia and Ireland backed the approach. Alongside this, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia all regretted that there were no provisions to tackle letter-box companies (which try to circumvent country of origin rules). Croatia said that the concept of “country of origin”, which determines the rules that apply to service providers, should be linked to “place of consumption”. Lastly, numerous countries backed the notion of co-productions: Italy went as far as to call for the concept of “European film-making”.
Technical evaluation of the proposal is expected to begin in the working group “as early as next month”, according to Dutch minister Jet Bussemaker. Slovakia, which will chair the Council from 1 July, has said that this issue will feature among its priorities. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)