European works: promoting a healthy European audiovisual sector

Through cooperation at scale across the European region, individual countries and Europe as a whole can maintain a strong and competitive audiovisual ecosystem and embrace the opportunities of digitalisation. This provides consumers with a choice of high-quality and diverse European content and services.

Nonetheless, a vocal minority of audiovisual stakeholders in a few Member States have suggested that the European works definition should be narrowed to exclude works from all or some countries that are part of Europe but are not a Member State of the EU.

This report, authored by Oliver & Ohlbaum with Frontier Economics, assesses the potential impact of a narrowed definition. We undertook an extensive interview programme with key stakeholders along the audiovisual value chain, carried out quantitative analysis of channel schedules and VOD catalogues by country of origin, and analysed developments in content investment across the EU.

It has been suggested that narrowing the definition could increase investment in new programmes and films in the EU. However, broadcasters and VOD services in Europe already optimise their investment in new content to best meet consumer demand, within constraining content budgets.

In fact, narrowing the definition would be likely to create immediate and longer-term negative impacts for producers, broadcasters and consumers. It would also overlook the close cultural, historic and linguistic ties felt by consumers across the European region, as reflected in their demand for content.

The potential impacts include:

• A reduced range of programming on channels and VOD services

• Fewer services, as some channels or groups become unviable

• Reduced EU producer access to international co-productions with wider European partners

• Increased regulatory hurdles for new European VOD entry and growth

These impacts would especially affect smaller EU Member States, as well as pay TV and free-to-air (FTA) portfolio channels across the EU. Overall, cultural diversity, plurality and freedom of information and ideas would suffer.

Click to read our Key Findings

Click to read the Executive Summary

Click to read the full Report

Click to read the Annexes, including country-specific charts

To watch a presentation of our findings, please see below: