Cabinet: 4.5 percent turnover of streaming services must go to Dutch productions

The Dutch State Secretary for Culture and Media Gunay Uslu wants major streaming services to use 4.5 percent of their Dutch annual turnover for Dutch series, films and documentaries. This is stated in a bill to the House of Representatives.

Streaming services with a Dutch annual turnover of more than thirty million euros must, if it is up to the State Secretary, use part of their turnover for Dutch films, series and documentaries. According to the government this includes Netflix, Amazon Prime and Videoland. These services must invest 4.5 percent of their annual turnover in Dutch productions.

By investing, the State Secretary means that they produce a Dutch title themselves or do this together with another party. Services can also buy and offer an existing, recent Dutch production. ‘A percentage of the investments yet to be determined’ must be for independent productions, in order to guarantee that the Dutch offer has diversity and individuality, writes the Secretary of State.

The obligation is intended to prevent ‘the Dutch cultural audiovisual offer’ from coming under more pressure from large companies with an international offer. The obligation was already discussed in the coalition agreement, but the percentages and other conditions were not yet known at the time.

The ministry has been working for years on an obligation for streaming services to use part of the turnover for Dutch productions. There was a similar proposal at the end of 2019. Then a percentage of three to six percent was mentioned. According to this proposal, services such as Netflix and Disney+ that make their own productions had to invest more in Dutch productions. Parties that only purchase and show productions from other parties had to invest three percent in Dutch productions. Now no such distinction is spoken of.

Although some streaming services are now making and showing Dutch productions, there are also parties that do not. HBO, for example, previously announced that it wanted to make Dutch productions, but said against it at the beginning of this month Variety to stop this. The company would like to save money with this.