Media
The content and media sector plays a key economic, social, and cultural role in Europe. The European Commission’s role is to put in place the ideal conditions and regulations to create a single market for audiovisual media services. The EU encourages cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, supports and supplements their action in the area of artistic and literary creation, and is required to take cultural aspects into account in all EU policies.
Content industries are not only crucial to cultural diversity; they are also of paramount importance for the economy of the European Union. For instance, the audiovisual sector alone directly employs over one million people in the EU. With the internet, media content, be it made of images, sound or written words can be distributed and accessed in a variety of ways and EU policy is evolving to reflect this new situation.
A key concern for the media sector is the proliferation of AI. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), European Magazine Media Association (EMMA), European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA) and News Media Europe (NME) collectively represent tens of thousands of journalists and newspaper and magazine publications across Europe. In a joint statement made in April 2025, they urge the European Commission to act now to support the prosperity and sustainability of European media, culture, information, and the democratic health of our societies.
They state: “When Al systems exploit online creative and cultural content -including press content- to fuel their own services, they unduly profit from human work. AI poses a double societal challenge: protecting both citizens’ fundamental rights and the link between human-made content and the machines that use it. When Generative AI uses journalistic and editorial materials notably to produce, without permission or remuneration, parasitic press-like content at minimal cost and without editorial oversight, everyone loses.” Also in May 2025, thousands of public and private news media around the world have joined an initiative by the European Broadcasting Union calling on AI developers to help ensure that Artificial Intelligence is safe, reliable and beneficial for the news ecosystem and the public.