Study on the practical implementation of the provisions of the audiovisual media services directive concerning the promotion of European works in audiovisual media services

Abstract

This report analyses the implementation of Articles 13, 16 and 17 of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). These articles concern the promotion of European works by broadcasters and video on demand service providers. The study is part of the regular monitoring which is also requested by the Directive. The report covers the period of 2015-2019 and therefore the version of the legal provisions that were valid during that time. This means that the amendments of Articles 13, 16 and 17 introduced in the 2018 revision of the AVMSD, which entered into force in 2020, are not reflected in this research. The study had these three objectives: - Map existing legislation and practices in Member States; - Provide insights on the developments in the audiovisual market; and - Analyse the content offer on both linear broadcasting and on-demand services. The study is based on the following main sources of information: - legal analysis of the audiovisual legal framework and its evolution in the 27 EU Member States, UK, Norway and Iceland. This analysis was undertaken with the support of independent legal experts from all the covered countries; - reporting about the share of European works in linear services and in VoD services based on the data provided by EU Member States. EU Member States’ data was accompanied by short reports providing additional information, explaining the national monitoring measures as well as explaining any measures taken to tackle cases of non-compliance by service providers; - data from Eurostat and Orbis dataset about the audiovisual sector and its sub-sectors; - programming data of 467 linear service channels in 11 EU Member States. For these channels the Electronic Programming Guides data was scraped for a period of 3 consecutive months and subsequently analysed to assess the content offer; - catalogues of 751 video on demand (VoD) services in 21 EU Member States + Norway; - qualitative key informant interviews in 11 countries and at EU level.