British TV and film to be cut in EU, as bloc prepares to limit Britain’s post-Brexit ‘soft power’

The EU is gearing up to take action against the “disproportionate” amount of British television and film content screened in Europe, according to a report by The Guardian.

The issue centers around the definition of British programs and films as being ‘European works’, which has been described as being a threat to Europe’s “cultural diversity”.

Under the EU’s audiovisual media services directive, firm quotas are given for the proportion of airtime given to European content on terrestrial television (over half) and video on demand (VOD) platforms (at least 30 per cent), such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.

However, despite the UK now being classed as a third country in terms of European Union definitions, its audiovisual content is still qualified as ‘European works’.

According to an EU document seen by The Guardian, in the “aftermath of Brexit”, it has been argued that the inclusion of UK content in such quotas has led to the “disproportionate” amount of British programming on European television, and “hinder a larger variety of European works (including from smaller countries or less spoken languages)”.

“Therefore the disproportionality may affect the fulfillment of the objectives of promotion of European works and cultural diversity aimed by the audiovisual media services directive”.