RESEARCH INSIGHT 

The case for a pan-European streaming platform

19 November 2025
What if people from all around Europe could have access to news content from the all member states, in their own languages? With this objective in mind, the EU is looking into the feasibility of a European-wide news streaming platform. For PMA, the researchers on the project reveal what this project entails. 
A graphic showing a person holding a remote controller watching a news broadcast on a smart TV set. Credit: Shutterstock.com / Paper Trident

By Konrad Bleyer-Simon & Jan Erik Kermer, European University Institute, Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom

Media pluralism has been under pressure across Europe for quite some time. The Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) has been monitoring media pluralism for more than a decade. Its yearly Media Pluralism Monitor data collection shows significant risks related to the concentration of media ownership, viability of the media, as well as political and economic capture. In some of the countries, even the public service media are subject to governmental interference that renders it unable to provide quality and balanced coverage to audiences.

This is the context in which we conducted our study on the feasibility of a European News Streaming Platform (ENSP) on behalf of the European Parliament’s Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA). This platform has the potential to address some of the mentioned challenges by providing EU-wide access to high-quality public service media content—especially related to news and current affairs—with automatically generated translations in all EU languages. Featuring dozens, if not hundreds, of the highest-quality media offers from across Europe, this platform could provide European citizens with access to an abundance of news sources on a given topic—enabling them to partake in meaningful debates with other Europeans on shared issues.

Read more: Adapting Public Service Media for the Age of Platforms

It is widely accepted in democratic scholarship that unfettered access to independent, high-quality information—that is evidence-based and grounded in facts—is a crucial and necessary precondition for a well-functioning democracy.

Feasibility is not an issue

The platform, at its core, would build on content that local and national broadcasters produce anyway, and leverage existing technologies. As such, the initial launch would not require extensive investments. Building on the high-quality news content produced by many of Europe’s public service media, its role is to connect, translate, and redistribute existing news segments in a multilingual, user-friendly way.

Using automatic speech recognition, the ENSP’s algorithm would convert spoken language in news broadcasts into written text, enabling the creation of transcripts. This process facilitates automatic translation of content, providing subtitles in the user’s chosen language, thereby making news accessible across different EU languages.

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The transcripts would power a cross-lingual search engine, which enables users to find and corroborate content across a range of different languages; while a public service-oriented recommender system could—if the user consents—tailor content suggestions to reflect public service values like diversity and inclusion.

Throughout the process, the streamed news content would remain on the websites of the participating media outlets; the platform itself would only provide translation and content recommendations, while the audiovisual content would be embedded. The technology used would be European, and big tech companies would be avoided as much as possible in order to foster Europe’s technological sovereignty.

In the long run, it would be preferable to have a wider content offer, including culture and entertainment, as those are just as important for a shared public sphere as news segments.

No clash with EU law

Our assessment shows that, in its initial form, the platform would be completely in line with EU regulations, namely the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The project is also well aligned with the EU’s Action Plan to support the recovery and transformation of the media and audiovisual sector, launched by the European Commission in December 2020, recognising the central role of platforms in Europe’s audiovisual market in creating a more resilient, innovative and pluralistic media ecosystem able to reach audiences far and wide. The idea of the ENSP was designed with the EU’s country of origin (COO) principle in mind, and follows a European Council copyright directive which allows news content from one member state to be shared across others.

Regarding user’s data collection, the platform would only process minimal personal data of non-registered users, mainly for usage measuring  purpose. It may also process personal details included in the original news content when creating transcripts and translations. From a legal perspective, this would limit data protection issues as the platform would retain only data regarding users’ IP addresses. Though IP addresses are considered personal data under the EU’s GDPR, if this data is used only for metrics, the EU platform could use the legitimate interest as the legal basis for this processing activity, as long as users are informed. This same legal basis of legitimate interest could be used for the processing activity regarding the translation data retained by the EU platform.

A view of Europe from space with interconnected digital webs
Communication technology with global internet network connected in Europe. Telecommunication and data transfer european connection links. IoT, finance, business, blockchain, security. Credit: NicoElNino / Shutterstock.com

The platform would feature AI systems falling within the definition provided in the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) — however, our study showed that associated risk here is minimal. This concerns particularly the use of automatic speech recognition, machine translation, speech-to-speech translation, and recommender systems for cross-lingual content discovery and personalisation. Moreover, the platform also qualifies as a hosting service under the DSA. Hosting services are exempt from liability only if they act quickly to remove or disable access to illegal content once they are aware of it. Providers are required to implement “easily accessible and user-friendly notice and action mechanisms” to allow for reporting of such content and must inform competent authorities if such illegal content have been noticed. Although unlikely, the proposed platform could be classified as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP), which would trigger their obligations under the DSA. To avoid this, the ENSP might need to be limited initially to news and public affairs content of public service media. But, all in all, EU rules are in support of the EU-wide streaming of important news content.

The ENSP, if available across the EU in all its languages, would act as a free language-learning tool — reinforcing the EU’s multilingualism policy — foster innovation and experimentation, and enhance Europe’s (including its member states) soft power leverage.

However, rules of good governance would need to be set up to guarantee that the platform will remain balanced and committed to ethical journalism and quality content creation. These need to make sure that participants are not only formally independent, but also independent in practice.

More needs to be done in the long run

The current EU acquis leads to some limitations that need to be addressed over time: currently, only audiovisual programmes related to “news and current affairs”, or ‘fully financed and controlled’ by a broadcasting organisation can benefit from the COO principle. This means that, at least initially, the content of the ENSP needs to be limited to “news and current affairs” programmes and content produced in-house by the participating media.

In the long run, however, it would be preferable to have a wider content offer, including culture and entertainment, as those are just as important for a shared public sphere as news segments.

This will likely require amendments of current regulation and a willingness from both policymakers and media service providers to cooperate closer with their European partners. There are multiple reasons why that should be done: the ENSP, if available across the EU in all its languages, would act as a free language-learning tool — reinforcing the EU’s multilingualism policy — foster innovation and experimentation, and enhance Europe’s (including its member states) soft power leverage. Not to mention, that it would strengthen information integrity, improve the visibility of trustworthy content and help researchers by acting as a data archive.

This might not be enough to reach large audiences already at the time of the launch, but it can guarantee constant growth, as content with high public value that fulfils critical information needs will eventually find its audiences.

About the authors

Konrad Bleyer-Simon is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (European University Institute). His research focuses on media and anti-disinformation policymaking, media capture, as well as new revenue models for news media.

Jan Erik Kermer is a Research Associate at the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, with research interests that lie at the intersection of media and politics. At the CMPF, Jan is also supporting the organisation’s data analysis and data visualisation capabilities.

Featured image: Person watching TV show, broadcast, breaking news, journalists’ report, telecasts. Character changing channels with television remote in hand. Flat isolated vector illustration on white background. Credit: Paper Trident / Shutterstock.com

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