France wants streaming firms to fund European content

Bill forces firms to invest 25% of French revenue into local productions

France is finalizing a bill to force video-on-demand services from Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Walt Disney Co. and others to invest at least 25 per cent of their revenue derived in the country to fund local productions.

The French legislation falls under a European Union directive requiring such companies to ensure that at least 30 per cent of their catalogues are comprised of European-made content.

The French Culture Ministry, which shared a presentation made Tuesday in Paris with Bloomberg, didn’t comment on how France is planning to measure sales of the platforms in France.

California-based Netflix has already made several French original series, including “Marseille” and “Osmosis,” and announced plans to open a Paris office in January. The service exceeded five million subscribers in France, chief executive officer Reed Hastings said last year.

Netflix now has 6.7 million subscribers in the country, Hastings said in an interview with French news magazine L’Express. The company plans to invest more than 100 million euros ($145 million) in French productions this year, he said.

Parliament will debate the bill beginning in March and it would be enacted after a latesummer final vote, including details of the services’ obligations, the ministry said.

The rule is part of France’s broader push for what it has dubbed its “cultural sovereignty in the digital era.”

It aims at buoying national traditional media players in the face of the growing success of foreign entertainment platforms. France is also going to relax broadcasting and advertising rules that were designed in part to protect French cinema and keep people going to movie theatres.

The National Centre for Cinema and Animated Image, the governmental body overseeing French productions and funding, estimates Netflix and equivalent platforms accrued sales in France of about 500 million euros in 2018, which would make for an investment of about 125 million euros, French newspaper Les Echos reported on Tuesday.

In a speech in Paris on Tuesday, President Emmanuel Macron said his country “has a model, the French model, that is defending authors and authors’ rights.”

It runs counter to the “AngloSaxon model,” which is designed to provide “content.”