Digital Policy ministers have managed to reach an agreement on the new audiovisual media services directive, over the controversial EU content quota to video-on-demand (VoD) platforms, New Europe reports.

Tuesday’s meeting was considered to be important, as it was moving towards a decision on the existence of an increased quota in the catalogs of video on demand services in favor of European works.

Ahead of the ministerial meeting, mostly northern European EU member states, among which the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Denmark, Luxembourg and Sweden, moved against any content quota, considering it rather “counterproductive”.

Mandatory quotas would force even non-EU VoD providers such as Netflix and Amazon that provide services in Europe to buy European content. The European Commission’s initial proposal on the directive a year ago, had put the VoD providers the minimum quota obligations of 20%.

“What is more important is to achieve a compromise,” stressed Andrus Ansip, European Commissioner Digital Single Market during the public session of the Council.
In the meantime, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Lithuania and Romania have tabled an amendment to the European Council revise the Commission’s proposal so that the quota would be raised to at least 30%. Greece was initially pushing for a 40%, but forming a block with other member states made Athens settle to a 30%, closer to the 20% quota that was already drafted by the Maltese presidency and Minister for Justice, Culture and Local Government, Owen Bonnici.

“We appreciate that you have changed the quota, it was of crucial importance to us to move to the European Parliament direction,” said the French representative at the meeting.

“We cannot leave European audiovisual works unprotected, turning Europe into a field of unequal competition with international productions,” said the Greek minister for Digital Policies, Telecommunications and Information Nikos Pappas.

The proposal suggested that the promotion of European works is a cornerstone of Europe’s cultural policy and as large VoD platforms were already close to 30%, wouldn’t distort the market, whereas setting up a de facto lower target would not be a substantial contribution to the effective promotion of European works.
A number of EU member states already have national broadcasting quotas, while the member state that pushed towards raising the quota, France, already requires both broadcasters and VoD platforms to have at least 60% of European works to their catalogues.

Tuesday’s European Council accepted the amendment as Spain, Poland, Latvia and Croatia agreed on the 30%, while Bulgaria was also in favor of the quotas.