ABSTRACT
This chapter maps how European policies have responded to global streaming, focusing on the rise of investment obligations within a wider toolkit of quotas, copyright, windowing, and support schemes. It traces the EU framework and shows how Member States assembled various mixes—levies, direct investment, or hybrids—illustrated by established and emerging measures in both large and small European markets. These measures diversified catalogues and anchored streamers in local ecosystems, but reinforced national logics, complicated harmonisation, and often met only minimum spend, especially in small markets. Frictions persist around enforcement, transparency, definitions of independence and rights retention, while litigation and extensions to video-sharing platforms test legal boundaries. Support instruments such as tax incentives and audiovisual funds interact with obligations and shape the geography of investment. The chapter calls for reforms linking obligations to rights retention and for coordination, warning that tools mitigate disruption but fall short of long-term resilience.
