The revised EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS) was the focus of the online conference organised by the European Audiovisual Observatory on Thursday 15 October. It focused on a crucial question: how to define the nationality of a film or audiovisual work, given that this defines access - or lack thereof - to funding and the inclusion in or exclusion from the 30% quota of European works imposed by the AVMS Directive on providers of on-demand audiovisual media services.
Moderated by Maja Cappello, Head of the Observatory’s Legal Service, this videoconference brought together representatives of Netflix, Canal Plus and Vodafone as well as the president of the Coordination of Independent Producers (CEPI), the director of the International Standard Audiovisual Number (ISAN), the secretary-general of the Association of National Film Agencies in Europe, the director of European Affairs at the Belgian SCA and a representative of the European Commission.
They all concluded that a common label is important in a European environment where the nationality standard differs from one country to another and is rarely verified after being self-entered by the declarant when introducing a work into the ISAN catalogue. This label should be accompanied by a centralised database for which the “Lumière VOD Directory of European Films” could serve as a basis. Established by the Council of Europe through the Observatory and co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme, this directory, which provides data on 41,550 European films in 367 VOD catalogues, will be extended to include television content (films and TV films) by the end of the year.
A reference linked to the requirements of the Directive would be a new challenge, which it declares itself ready to take up. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)