Inter-institutional negotiations will continue on audiovisual media services. The representatives of the Parliament, Council and Commission took their leave of one another on 7 November without managing to overcome their main disagreements (the freedom of reception/retransmission, circumvention and regulatory cooperation). A new trialogue meeting has been scheduled for 28 November.
Readers may recall that the draft text, which was presented in May 2016, aims to create a fairer regulatory environment between traditional services and over-the-top video services (OTT), to build more flexibility into the rules on advertising and to support creativity in Europe through obligations to promote European works (see EUROPE 11558). Inter-institutional negotiations began on 10 July and four meetings have so far been held (see EUROPE 11896). In their conclusions of 19 October, the heads of state or government said that the dossier should ideally be concluded by the end of the year.
Progress and stumbling blocks
At the fourth trialogue meeting on 7 November, the negotiators made progress on some articles, but not on the more difficult ones, a source told us. According to our information, they reached a compromise on the question of transparency on media ownership (article 5) and made slight progress on reasons for content to be blocked (article 6). They also agreed to govern self and co-regulation matters and the role of the European group of regulators (ERGA) horizontally at their technical meetings, insofar as these references crop up several times in the text. On the former question, Parliament stresses the need to encourage the protection of minors through self-regulation, whilst the Council's preference is for co-regulation. On the latter, the Council considers that ERGA's role should be limited to technical expertise, whilst the Council is talking about an “advisory and assistance” role. The Commission may present a proposed compromise at a forthcoming technical meeting.
The co-legislators however failed to reach an agreement on the promotion of and financial participation in European works. Broadly, they agree that OTT services should be required to promote European works at a level of 30%, but cannot agree on the type of services that should make a financial contribution to the production of these works. Parliament, supported by the Commission, would like this provision to apply only to OTT services, whilst the Council would like to cover all linear services. At the trialogue meeting, the Commission reportedly took the floor to state that it would be technically complicated to extend this obligation to all linear services.
Nor was any progress made on the more controversial issues, such as the freedom of reception/retransmission (article 3), circumvention (article 4) and regulatory cooperation (article 30). A new trialogue session is scheduled for 28 November and a sixth meeting may take place in December. In the meantime, technical meetings are expected to continue. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)