Advanced Television

EU takes Spain to court over new TV law

May 19, 2022

From David Del Valle in Madrid

Brussels is taking Spain to the European Court for the delay in the approval of its new TV law that transfers the European directives to tSpanish legislation. Spain failed to meet the September 19th 2020 deadline to integrate the European rules into the Spanish legislation, resulting in Brussels taking the case to Court – seeking a heavy fine. The same measure has been adopted with other countries including Czech Republic, Ireland, Romania and Slovakia. The European legislation aims to guarantee free competition among all TV players, strenghthen the role of national regulators, and oblige streaming operators to have at least 30 per cent of European content.  Spain’s Ley Audiovisual – that must transpose the European legislation – is being debated in Parliament and is set to be approved later this year. The new piece of legislation will rule that big streaming players (Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max, Disney+ etc) must commit at least 5 per cent of their revenue to the production of European content (including any of the other co-official languages in Spain: Catalonian, Galician, Basque Language). The legal text states that platforms with revenues of over €10 million a year will have to pledge 3.5 per cent to independent productions in Spanish or any other co-official language.

Categories: Articles, Content, Policy, Production, Regulation, VOD

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