Response to the Call for Evidence on the Audiovisual Media Services Directive

The Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) is one center piece of the European Union’s (EU) media legislation. It has been overhauled in 2018, with some further amendments made by the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) in 2024. Past modifications had been mainly motivated by significant new trends in audiovisual media offering and consumption, frequently due to changes in underlying production, distribution, and reception technologies. Also, an assessment of the balancing of rights and obligations across the (wider) sector had taken place, most recently inter alia in view of very large online platforms and their potential role in a continued access to content by media outlets (cf. Article 18 EMFA), or when, during the last revision, new duty-of-care requirements had been formulated in view of user-generated-content platforms. 

According to documents recently issued by the European Commission (draft EU Democracy Shield; Call for Evidence for the present evaluation), today marks another moment to take stock of new developments in the sector while also assessing whether the existing legal framework remains fit to achieve its intended goals. Article 33 para. 1 of the Directive foresees that, by the December 2026, the European Commission “shall submit to the European Parliament and the Council an ex post evaluation, accompanied where appropriate by proposals for its review, of the impact of this Directive and its added value”. 

As in the past, Connect Europe emphasizes that the EU’s audiovisual media services legislation must continue to strive for a fair, effective and harmonized framework. This framework also in future shall take into consideration not only the challenges and opportunities offered by new business models and new technologies but also foster maintaining a genuine European approach to media activities and public policy objectives attached to those. Together, the Commission, the European Parliament (EP) and Member States within the Council are expected to thoroughly analyze whether existing rules are still relevant in the current market context while rigorously applying a simplification and deregulation approach, wherever possible. 

We elaborate more in the paper. For any questions, please contact Xhoana Shehu (shehu@connecteurope.org), Policy Manager at Connect Europe.