Media Policies

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The media sector plays a key economic, social and cultural role in Europe.  Europe has a strong media industry, which creates growth and jobs and presents European life, history, culture and values around the world.

The media landscape is following a transformation, characterised by a steady increase of convergence of media services, with a visible move towards intertwining traditional broadcast and internet. Audiovisual media content has arrived to non-TV screens and internet content is arriving to the traditional TV screen. The proliferation of connected devices and the wide availability of faster broadband connections are affecting existing business models and consumer habits and creating new challenges and opportunities for the creative industries.

This phenomenon empowers European citizens to seamless and interactive experiences, letting them access any content while being agnostic as to the device or geographic locations from which they interact. A Digital Single Market for content can therefore become a reality if all the remaining barriers can be lifted.
In this landscape, TV remains the foremost source of information and entertainment in the EU where the audiovisual sector directly employs over one million people. To function optimally, a "single European TV market" needs a minimum set of common rules covering aspects like advertising, promotion of European works and protection of minors.  To this effect, the EU adopted the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). But our policy crosses EU's frontiers and covers broad areas such as the EU Enlargement, its neighbourhood policy, trade relations, the promotion of cultural diversity and the international cooperation in the audiovisual sector.
It is equally committed to the promotion of Media freedom and Media pluralism including independent media governance, as key elements for enabling the exercise of freedom of expression.