Eight years after the European Union rewrote its Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) to extend cultural quotas to streaming services, and nearly five years after France codified one of the bloc's most aggressive investment levies through Decree 2021-793 — the so-called SMAD decree — regulators in Paris, Rome and Madrid are still tightening the screws on Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and their smaller rivals. With the European Commission's REFIT review of the AVMSD now in its evidence-gathering phase, this is the right moment to ask a question the original political bargain mostly avoided: are these rules actually working for European audiences, European creators, or European competitiveness?
The answer, on the current record, is: nobody really knows. And that should worry anyone who believes regulation should be evidence-based.
What the rules actually require
Two layers of obligation now sit on top of every major streamer operating in the EU.
First, AVMSD Article 13, as amended by Directive (EU) 2018/1808, requires on-demand audiovisual services to ensure that European works make up at least 30% of their catalogues and to give those works adequate prominence — meaning catalogue share alone is not enough; the recommendation algorithm and the interface have to push them too.
Second, Member States may impose financial contributions on services targeting their territory, even if those services are established elsewhere in the EU. France has gone furthest. Under Decree 2021-793 and Arcom's implementing conventions, non-resident streaming platforms must invest a sliding share of their net French revenue — typically 20% to 25%, depending on whether they offer recent cinema — into European audiovisual production, with a binding French-language sub-quota and detailed rules on independent producers, originals and rights ownership.
Italy's AGCOM has imposed a similar investment obligation under Legislative Decree 208/2021, and Spain's Ley 13/2022 General Audiovisual Communication Law levies up to 5% of relevant Spanish revenue on large streamers, with sub-quotas for works in Spanish and the co-official languages (Catalan, Basque, Galician).
The case the regulators tell
Arcom's annual reports point to hundreds of millions of euros now flowing into French and European production budgets that, the agency argues, would not otherwise exist. Producer associations in France, Italy and Spain make the same case: without quotas, streamers would optimise for global hits and let smaller-language production wither.
There is a real argument here. Streaming economics genuinely do favour scale — a Spanish-language hit that travels (Netflix's La Casa de Papel, Movistar's El Hoyo) is more profitable per euro than ten domestic-only commissions. Some industrial policy floor may be defensible.
But the evidence base is thinner than the rhetoric
Three problems undercut the current model.
1. The 30% catalogue quota is essentially a paperwork exercise. The European Audiovisual Observatory's most recent monitoring found that the major SVOD catalogues in Europe already comfortably exceed 30% European content on average — largely because European libraries are vast and cheap to license. Catalogue presence is not the binding constraint; viewership is. And there is no Article 13 obligation to actually watch European works.
2. Investment levies are being layered on top of, not instead of, national broadcaster obligations. French streamers already finance the CNC through a tax on subscriptions. They now also fund production directly via Arcom's convention, and they remain subject to the CNC levy. Spain's 5% obligation under Ley 13/2022 sits alongside RTVE funding contributions. The cumulative burden is not transparent to consumers, and the European Commission has so far declined to publish a consolidated map of national obligations — even though Article 13(2) explicitly requires it.
3. "Prominence" rules push regulators uncomfortably close to algorithmic design. Italy's AGCOM has signalled it may begin auditing recommender systems for European-works exposure. France's Arcom is considering similar tools. Telling a private platform that its homepage must privilege state-defined cultural categories is a much bigger regulatory step than a catalogue ratio, and it raises the same free-expression concerns that civil society groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation have flagged elsewhere in the EU's digital rulebook.
What a proportionate review would look like
The Commission's REFIT review is the right venue to fix this — if Brussels treats it as a genuine audit rather than a ratification exercise.
- Publish the data. Article 13(4) of the AVMSD already obliges Member States to report on implementation. Those reports should be standardised, comparable, and public, with both catalogue share and viewing share of European works disclosed.
- Cap cumulative burdens. A streamer should not face overlapping CNC levies, Arcom investment obligations, AGCOM contributions and Ley 13/2022 quotas without a single-market ceiling.
- Sunset the prominence rules pending evidence. Before regulators reach into recommendation engines, they should demonstrate that catalogue quotas alone have failed.
- Protect smaller players. Investment levies fall hardest on niche services — arthouse platforms, sports streamers, EU-headquartered challengers. Carve-outs based on turnover and market share should be the norm, not the exception.
European cultural policy has a legitimate goal: ensuring that the continent tells its own stories in its own languages. But that goal is poorly served by a patchwork of overlapping quotas whose effect on actual viewership, creator livelihoods, and platform competitiveness no one has rigorously measured. The 2026 REFIT review is the moment to find out — and to design something proportionate enough to last.