Minority interests taken into account in the European Parliament’s report on geo-blocking

The European Parliament adopted on Wednesday, 13 December 2023 a Report on the implementation of the 2018 Geo-blocking Regulation in the digital single market, with important reference to the situation of linguistic minorities and border regions.

The document points out that citizens living in border regions or belonging to linguistic minorities are sometimes prevented from accessing content in their native languages as a result of geo-blocking, which may limit their access to cultural content. It notes that the growth of on-demand content and the changing consumption patterns of audiovisual content may initiate a rethink of the EU’s approach to content licensing.

The report calls on the Commission to propose tangible solutions that will allow consumers, in particular citizens living in cross-border regions or belonging to linguistic minorities, legal access to varying cross-catalogue content across borders; recalls the obligation for the Commission to report on the evaluation of the Geo-blocking Regulation.

The report mentions that, in the area of audiovisual content, the Commission has engaged in a dialogue with stakeholders to promote the circulation of quality content in the EU. In addition to representatives of the audiovisual sector, the FUEN, as an umbrella organisation for minorities, was invited to this forum, thanks to its activities in this field. One of the points of the Minority SafePack Initiative is to ensure better access to audiovisual content in minority languages, and this was represented in the negotiations. The EP requested that a report on the results and conclusions of the dialogue be presented by the Commission to the Parliament.

FUEN President Loránt Vincze, Member of the European Parliament was a vocal supporter of the report.

FUEN would like to thank the members of the Minority Intergroup and all Members of the European Parliament who represented the interests of the minorities during the debate and the vote despite the strong lobbying of the audiovisual sector against any change in the status quo regarding geo-blocking.