Debate: Evaluation of the Geo-blocking Regulation
Date: THURSDAY, 11 MARCH 2021
Speaker: Johannes Hahn
Language: EN

With regard to enforcement, the Commission fully shares the Parliament’s view on the importance of ensuring the effective enforcement of the current geo—blocking rules. For this reason, the Commission is also fully engaged in cooperating with the competent national authorities to ensure appropriate enforcement of the regulation, including within the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) network. In this regard, it plans, first of all, to steer and monitor the cooperation as regards geo—blocking—related aspects of the coordinated enforcement activities of the CPC network. This adds to ad hoc discussions within the CPC network and guidance on issues raised as regards the coordinated enforcement and investigation cases. Moreover, in order to facilitate enforcement – but also compliance – the Commission will provide additional guidance within the context of the planned update of the Service Directive Handbook, as well as in updating the clarifications on specific implementation questions on the basis of the issues discussed within the CPC network. With regard to the cross—border delivery, as mentioned in the parliamentary question, it remains a business choice of the trader to provide cross—border delivery or not. Nevertheless, artificial segmentation of markets by traders preventing access without any objective justification should be avoided. The Commission would like to stress that the Geo—Blocking Regulation is a part of a wider range of EU measures to facilitate the active engagement of traders cross—border. Moreover, the pandemic has triggered significant changes in the evolution of e—commerce. The Commission will therefore closely monitor the implementation and first effects of such complementary measures, as well as the evolution of cross—border e—commerce, and report its findings in the context of another stocktaking exercise in the Regulation in 2022. With regard to the audio—visual content, the Commission will engage with stakeholders in a dialogue to identify how to foster better circulation of such content across the Union. As indicated in the recent media and audio—visual action plan, the objective of the dialogue is to identify concrete steps to improve the access to and availability of audio—visual content across borders in the Union. The dialogue will gather representatives from the audio—visual industry, consumer organisations and other interested parties, such as national film funds. It will be launched in the first half of this year. In practice, the dialogue could help define specific targets to be reached to improve the access to and availability of audio—visual works across the Union and to identify concrete actions that could be taken to achieve those targets. The Commission expects the industry producers, distributors, broadcasters, online services and other interested parties to engage constructively in the dialogue and to commit to take action. The Commission will monitor the progress in the achievement of the specific targets in cooperation with the audio—visual sector. The Commission will look in particular at any improvements achieved in terms of wider circulation of audio—visual works and consumers’ access to a variety of audio—visual content. The Commission will take stock of the progress achieved by the end of 2022 and decide on the follow—up, assessing various options, including legislative interventions.