European Parliament Votes in Favour of Geo-Blocking • CICAE

Good news from Strasbourg / Brussels: The European Parliament, on Wednesday 13 December, voted to protect territorial exclusivity and reject proposals to extend the EU-wide regulation on geo-blocking to the audiovisual sector. Prior to the vote, the CICAE, together with a broad coalition of over 700 signatories from across the European audiovisual industries, had called on parliament to protect the AV sector. The joint appeal (which you can find below) underlined the paramount importance of territorial exclusivity for the financing and distribution of films and audiovisual content in Europe.

With this decision, the European Parliament has voted in favour of preserving Europe's unique (film-)cultural diversity!

The vote followed a proposal by the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), which had called for a future inclusion of the AV sector into the Geo-Blocking Regulation in its own-initiative report. Contrary to the IMCO report, in Wednesday's plenary vote, amendments by the parliamentary Culture Committee (CULT) were adopted emphasising that the report's final version should not contain requiremenst to include the audiovisual sector in the regulation's scope. According to the decision, the unique characteristics of the audiovisual sector should continue to be taken into account in future revisions of the Geoblocking Regulation.

"The vote of the European Parliament is of paramount importance for the independence of our film industry and for preserving European cultural and creative diversity", says CICAE-President Dr. Christian Bräuer. "Territorial exclusivity is a cornerstone of Europe's audiovisual sector, which is based on linguistic and regional diversity. What's at stake are not only the business models of the European film and cinema industry, which is characterized by small and medium-sized enterprises, but the very protection of our cultural values. We are relieved that we were able to get this message across with our joint appeal and that our tireless work has paid off. Our sincere gratitude goes to our fellow campaigners at the European level, as well as to our members who signed and supported the appeal in such significant numbers".