The European Parliament is taking steps which could see an end to the geo-blocking of audio-visual services in Europe, or in other words, an end to country-specific restrictions on streaming films, series, and sport inside the EU.
Geo-blocking in the context of audio-visual services is where series or films are restricted by country, and is most commonly associated with media streaming services such as Netflix.
MEP Karen Melchior (Renew Europe - Denmark) is calling for new measures to ensure linguistic minorities and cross-border communities, as well as citizens who move permanently to another EU Member State, can still access culture in their native language.
"It is an even more significant problem in border regions and for linguistic minorities across the EU, for example, in Belgium, where the German-speaking community are increasingly cut off from films and series in German," said Karen Melchior.
While in the past, people living in border communities could tune their television to the neighbouring country's channel, today Europeans face "unjustified geo-blocking" – country-specific restrictions which mean many people cannot access certain content.
In 2018, the European Parliament voted to end geo-blocking in the EU for online sales to end discrimination between EU customers within the common market. Dividing markets per country and increasing profits to the detriment of foreign customers were seen as cases of unjustified geo-blocking.
The regulation applies to all traders, including web shops, operating within the EU, as well as Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. However, it wasn’t extended to streaming audiovisual content (films, series, and sport).
Borderless content across the EU
On Wednesday, MEPs approved (11 to 10) a report which could extend the regulation of geo-blocking to audiovisual services.
MEPs notably fought off a fierce attempt by lobbyists from the audio-visual (AV) sector to derail the approval of the report. The AV sector sees any change to the status quo as a threat to their business-model, calling the report "unnecessary", according to MEP Melchior.
Reacting to the approval of the report, the International Federation of Film Distributors' and Publishers' Associations (FIAD) "deeply regrets" the vote, before adding that geo-blocking "serves as cornerstones for sustaining and powering the European film-audiovisual industry."
But for the Danish MEP, citizens' frustrations must be heard, as more citizens are wanting legal access to content across the EU. "Radio or TV waves and Blu-ray discs don’t stop at borders in Europe, so why should video-on-demand?" Melchior also stated that there are numerous series which are already enjoying EU-wide success – such as the Spanish series La casa de papel (Money Heist) or Denmark's Borgen.
Within the report, the MEP also looked into completely ending geo-blocking, how the business model for films and series needs to adapt to better meet consumers expectations in the future, and how the EU can support the sector.
"We need to remove barriers that limit how much of the rich fabric of European culture they can experience. That is what citizens today demand: our media consumption habits are changing, and laws must change with them," Melchior concluded.
