European Media and Audiovisual Action Plan

The Media and Audiovisual Action Plan focuses on the news media sector — printed and online press, radio, and audiovisual services — and the audiovisual entertainment sector — cinema, TV, video streaming, video games and innovative formats such as virtual reality experiences.

These two sectors are facing important trends and challenges that have accelerated with the COVID-19 crisis. In this context, the European Commission will help Europe’s media not only to be resilient but also to remain competitive at European and global levels, by combining investment with policy actions.

In order to achieve these goals, the Communication is built around three themes and ten actions:

Recover: to help audiovisual and media companies to weather the current storm and provide liquidity and financial support by:

• providing an interactive tool to give European audiovisual and news media companies guidance on different sources of EU support;
• boosting investment to foster European audiovisual production and distribution by strengthening equity investment in this area;
• launching of a ‘NEWS’ initiative, which will bundle actions and support for the news media industry.

The European Media Industry Outlook report

Transform: to address structural issues by helping industry face the green and digital twin transitions in the context of fierce global competition. This will be achieved by:

• creating European ‘media data space’, to support media companies in sharing data and developing innovative solutions;
• fostering of a European virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) industrial coalition – to help EU media benefit from the advancement of this immersive media;
• helping the industry become climate neutral by 2050 by facilitating the exchange of best practices, and putting a stronger focus on environmental sustainability in Creative Europe MEDIA.

Enable and empower: to set the conditions to allow more innovation in the sector, whilst ensuring a true level-playing field, and empowering citizens to access content more easily and take informed decisions by:

• launching a dialogue with the audiovisual industry to agree on concrete steps to improve the access to and availability of audiovisual content across the EU;
• fostering European media talent through mentoring and training, as well as scouting and supporting promising European media start-ups;
• enhancing media literacy, aimed at empowering citizens, with a toolbox and guidelines for Member States regarding the new media literacy obligations of the AVMSD, and supporting the creation of independent alternative news aggregation services capable of offering a diverse set of accessible information sources;
• strengthening the cooperation framework among European media regulators within the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA).

More information: European Commission