More than 63% of Europe's television broadcasters' programming time is devoted to European works and over 36% to works by independent European producers. These new figures come from the European Commission's eighth report on effectiveness of EU rules on the promotion of European works, which covers the period 2005-2006.

This report which is published every two years is based on information provided by the EU Member States and monitors the promotion of European works on European TV screens under the 'Television without Frontiers' Directive. For the first time, broadcasters in the new EU-10 Member States are fully analysed in this report, and the report shows that they show today as much European content as those in the EU-15.

"Today's figures demonstrate the vitality of the EU audiovisual industry and the equal commitment of all EU Member States (old and new) to cultural diversity. With the application of the 'Television without Frontiers' Directive, the EU and the Member States are proving their commitment to cultural diversity, which continues to benefit from the major presence of European programming on European TV," said Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding. "Of course, our audiovisual industry will need to continue its efforts with the new Audiovisual Media Services Directive of 2007 and offer rich and innovative European content for the take-up of new media services such as mobile TV and video-on-demand, which can in turn boost European content and culture in general."

Today's figures show the impact of Articles 4 and 5 of the "Television without Frontiers" Directive, which aim at promoting the broadcasting of European works, including those created by producers who are independent from the broadcasters. The European Commission proposed these measures in 1989 to bring the benefits of the single market to television viewers (in the form of greater choice) and to broadcasters and producers (a bigger audience for European programmes).

The new report on the implementation of these provisions in the 25 EU Member States shows that the EU-wide average broadcasting time for European works has increased from 63.52% in 2005 to 65.05% in 2006. The Commission report also shows that in the medium term (2003-2006), the broadcasting of European works has stabilised at above 63%. Average transmission times varied between 47.31% in Slovenia and 81.14% in Denmark in 2005 and between 45.44% in Sweden and 81.07% in Poland in 2006. These shares were comparable with those recorded for the previous reporting period 2003-2004 (IP/06/1115).

The average share of independent producers’ works broadcast by all European channels in all Member States rose from 36.44% in 2005 to 37.59% in 2006. This is well above the 10% set by the "Television without Frontiers" Directive. This also means that in the medium term (2003-2006), the EU-wide broadcasting of European works by independent producers improved by 6.2 percentage points.

For recent European works by independent producers, that is to say works broadcast within five years of their production, transmission time in 2005-2006 was constantly above 25%. This confirms the positive trend in the scheduling of recent works, which increased by 2.59 percentage points over 2003-2006.