On 6 June 2018, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission announced a preliminary political agreement on the revised rules to apply to audiovisual media. In the audiovisual sector, the rapid emergence of a few dominant players has created concerns about the sustainability of national content production and, with it, the preservation of Europe’s cultural diversity. While the AVMSD review goes in the right direction, there are also concerns that this reform alone may prove insufficient in ensuring the viability of the European audiovisual sector.
In this Policy Brief, Robin Huguenot-Noël argues that:
1. The size and scope of the transformations affecting the audiovisual industry will dwarf purely national policy initiatives.
2. The global standing of the European audiovisual industry hinges on its ability to nurture pan-European market leaders.
In a nutshell, developing a pan-European industrial strategy may be the most effective way to address the structural challenges that European audiovisual production is facing in the digital era. Such pan-European industrial policy should notably focus on completing the digital single market, reforming EU competition and taxation tools and widening the scope of EU’s economic diplomacy.
Read the full paper here