The EBU and BEUC, the European Consumer Voice, have written to the European Parliament requesting the rejection of the mandate on the SatCab regulation. As it currently stands, the SatCab Regulation has been watered down to a great extent, completely missing the opportunity to modernise licensing rules and boost the circulation of European content in the EU as originally intended.

EBU & BEUC letter on SatCab Regulation – key vote next week for broadcasters and consumers

Dear Member of the European Parliament,

We address you on behalf of the European Broadcasting Organisation (EBU) and the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) in view of the upcoming vote, on 12 December, on the mandate to enter inter-institutional negotiations on the Proposal for a Regulation on Online Broadcasting (‘SatCab’) - COM (2016)594.

EBU and BEUC are deeply disappointed with the report adopted by the Legal Affairs (JURI) committee on 21 November. MEPs of the JURI committee missed an opportunity to modernise licensing rules and bring European audiovisual content closer to consumers across the EU. Under modernized rules rights holders would continue to receive appropriate remuneration. The aim of this legislative initiative was to introduce a future-proof and consumer-friendly framework that would boost cross-border access to European content.

The report adopted by the JURI committee, however, would render the proposal meaningless and would even be detrimental to the existing licensing system,

in particular because the Committee rejected the proposal to extend the retransmission scheme to new closed platforms and to broadcasters’ own on-demand services and took the decision to reduce the application of Article 2 to ‘news and current affairs programmes’.

In its current form, the report will neither support the establishment of a forward-looking environment for the clearance of rights for broadcasters' content online or on third-party platforms, nor does it meet European consumers’ needs and expectations to access more cross-border audiovisual content.

We therefore call on the European Parliament to reject the mandate for trilogue negotiations. Instead, we would like MEPs to further discuss this important proposal in order to find a positive compromise for the benefit of all Europeans.

Thank you in advance for taking our demands into consideration and please feel free to contact us should you be interested in receiving further information.

Sincerely,

Ursula Pachl                                                           Nicola Frank

Deputy Director General – BEUC                        Head of European Affairs – EBU