Fieldwork: February-March 2019. Publication: May 2019.

On 27 February 2018, the European Union adopted the EU Geo-Blocking regulation, which has applied since 3 December 20181. This Regulation prohibits unjustified geo-blocking, and other forms of discrimination, based on customers’ nationality, place of residence, or place of establishment and is particularly relevant to all businesses selling online in different EU Member States, whether or not they are located in the EU. Furthermore, the proposal bans the blocking of access to websites and the use of automatic re-routing if the customer has not given prior consent. One of the most significant exceptions to the Regulation, however, concerns audio-visual services and other electronically supplied copyright-protected content. As regards audio-visual services, these are fully excluded from the scope of the Geo-Blocking Regulation, mirroring the exclusions from the scope of the Services Directive. Electronically supplied services linked to (non-audio-visual) copyrighted content and neighbouring rights are also excluded from the main Regulation's absolute prohibition of applying different general conditions of access laid down in Article 4 (e.g., music streaming and downloading, e-books, games). In this regard, however, the Regulation mandates a first short-term review which should assess, by March 2020, in particular, the scope of the Regulation, both as regards the specific scope of Article 4 and more generally as regards sectors not covered by the Services Directive, including audio-visual services. In the context of activities related to the first short-term review, this Eurobarometer survey was launched to measure consumers’ demand and assess the difficulties they face when trying to access online content services meant for other EU countries.

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