Eurovisioni XXXVIII
What digital sovereignty for audiovisual Europe?
Thursday 20 and Friday 21 November 2025
Palazzo Farnese – French Embassy in Rome
Piazza Farnese 67 – Rome
(international day Friday 21 November)
The urgent need to establish and implement a common European strategy to restore European sovereignty in the digital field by rapidly and effectively applying the principles of the declaration signed by the 27 countries of the European Union in Berlin on 18 November is the main message that emerged from the two days of work at Eurovisioni, the international film and television festival held this year at Palazzo Farnese at the French Embassy.
The event, organised by the Eurovisioni association in collaboration with AGCOM and Institut français Italia, with the support of Eutelsat, RAI, and various other Italian and European organisations, reached its 38th edition and this year was part of UNESCO’s official initiatives to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 2005 Convention on the Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, as stated in a video message received from UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Culture, Ernesto Ottone.
The international day opened with greetings from the French Ambassador to the Italian Government, Martin Briens, the President of Eurovisioni, Michel Boyon, the President of AGCOM, Giacomo Lasorella, the President of the French ARCOM, Martin Ajdari, the Vice-President of Confindustria Radio TV, Stefano Selli (also speaking on behalf of RAI President Antonio Marano, who was unable to attend), Olivier Henrard, Director-General of the CNC of the French Ministry of Culture, and Agnes Pleinecassagne of Eutelsat.
Roberto Viola, Director-General of the European Commission’s CNECT Directorate, spoke at length in his introductory speech about the need for European digital sovereignty, explaining how the Commission is fine-tuning the various measures launched in light of the experience of recent months, with the aim of making the tools more effective and easier to apply. He also outlined the Commission’s Agorà plan for reforming the support mechanisms for the audiovisual industry (MEDIA and Creative Europe programmes), which from 2027 will also be extended to publishing and journalism, and pointed out that funding has been significantly increased precisely to meet these increased and new needs.
Before Panel 1, Matthias Pfeffer spoke from Berlin to outline the conclusions of the summit held the day before, at which the 27 agreed to restore European digital sovereignty as soon as possible. The same urgency was reiterated by the participants in the round table on the impact of artificial intelligence two years after the enactment of the European Union’s A.I. Act (Benoit Loutrel of ARCOM, Prof. Mario De Caro of Roma Tre University, Christophe Tardieu of France Télévisions, Carlo Rodomonti of Rai Cinema, Viviana De Vincentis of SIAE) who called for specific implementing rules for the media and audiovisual sector and asked that AI be taken into account in the announced copyright reform.
QUOTE: Elisa Giomi, session moderator and AGCOM commissioner: “The media industry has a peculiarity: its products are symbolic goods that produce meaning. They are products that have a powerful impact on culture and also on participation in the public sphere. They are works of the mind. In this sense, AI goes to the root of the creative process, changing its nature and affecting the very concept of originality and creativity. On the risk side, Giomi talks about a two-speed AI Act. ‘I was very surprised that the AI Act did not include the media among the eight sectors considered high risk,’ she said, ‘even though a number of principles also apply to this sector.’
This request was shared by the participants in the session on the future of public service broadcasting (Eric Scherer, Amma Asante, Stephane Bijoux of France Télévisions, Sara Zanotelli of the Italian Association of Influencers and Karim Ibourki of the CSA in Belgium), who pointed out the need for a radical transformation of public services, which must become digital media on the Internet in order to reach the audience of the new generations. If this trend is not reversed, young Europeans will receive information mainly from US and Chinese sources.
QUOTE: Amma Asante, chair of the Dutch audiovisual regulatory authority and future chair of the European Media Board: ‘The majority of public service viewers in the Netherlands are over 65, 80% are over 50, while more than half of young people under 30 access information only through the Internet.’
This was also requested by participants in session three, dedicated to audience measurement (Paolo Lugiato from Auditel, Peter Matzneller from Netflix, Yannick Carriou from Mediametrie, Carolina Lorenzon and Diego Ciulli from Google), who called for the European standards for the application of unified measurement criteria between terrestrial television and radio consumption and Internet consumption to come into force as soon as possible. Today, in fact, as Carolina Lorenzon of Mediaset/MFE complained, there are no common measures for Internet consumption, and therefore each company makes the calculations that best suit its interests.
QUOTE: Laura Aria, AGCOM commissioner and session moderator:
‘In Italy, too, most advertising revenue is now collected by online giants, in the absence of shared measurement systems. AGCOM has launched a consultation on the matter, which will serve to form the authority’s opinion on this issue before proceeding to a decision. This decision will obviously be agreed with all the other European authorities gathered in the European Media Board.’
From a different angle, the participants in session four, dedicated to the reform of European support measures for audiovisual production, moderated by Mihaela Gavrila, also reached the same conclusions. Participants included Lucia Recalde for the European Commission and Enrico Vannucci for Eurimages, Carlotta Calori for the European Producers Club, and which was preceded by the broadcast of the UNESCO ADG’s video message on the 2005 Convention.
Olivier Henrard, Director General of the CNC (the French Ministry of Culture agency that provides public funding), explicitly spoke of a “direct attack by American interests against European support mechanisms for European film and TV production”, which must be responded to by making these measures “more effective and suited to the digital challenge”. This appeal was responded to positively by Giorgio Brugnoni, the new director of the Ministry of Culture’s Directorate-General for Cinema and Audiovisual Media, in his first public appearance, who explicitly spoke of ‘full agreement between Italy and France’ on the reforms underway in Europe. Finally, Enrico Vannucci of Eurimages announced that the decision to create a pan-European fund to support TV series could already be taken on Wednesday 26 November in Strasbourg by the Council of Culture Ministers.
In his closing remarks, AGCOM President Giacomo Lasorella highlighted the presence at this edition of Eurovisioni of the presidents of various regulatory authorities (Italy, France, the Netherlands, Belgium) at this edition of Eurovisioni, demonstrating a strong desire to work together to implement the entire European body of rules governing the digital media world: from the AI Act to the EMFA, from the DSA to the DMA and the upcoming reform of copyright and the Audiovisual Media Service Directive. Meanwhile, the President of the Institut français Italia, Florence Alibert, recalled that a coordination meeting between Italy and France will take place in the spring to develop common positions to be reported to the European level, where many of the issues addressed this year at Eurovisioni will be taken up and explored in greater depth. The president of Eurovisioni, Michel Boyon, closed the proceedings by reminding those present that the reflections of the two days of Eurovisioni will be reported to the European institutions, with the hope that they will serve to include the point of view of operators in the sector in future legislation.
The day ended with a preview of the first two episodes of the new TV series Sandokan (international market version), presented by Michele Zatta of Rai Fiction and Lux Vide, in the presence of one of the two directors, Jan Michelini, and Giovanni Bernabei of Lux Vide. The Italian version of these first two episodes (“The Tiger of Malaysia” and “The Pearl of Labuan”) will be broadcast on Rai Uno on Monday 4 December in prime time, with the others following every Monday until Christmas Eve. The series will be distributed for the non-European market by Disney Plus and will be broadcast in France by TF1.
OTHER EUROVISIONI PREVIEWS:
During Eurovisioni XXXVIII – thanks to the collaboration with Rai Play and the Research Department – the new anti-disinformation clips (fifth series, currently available only in Italian) produced by RAI for the IDMO consortium were previewed. The clips from the fourth series were also re-aired in Italian and English.
On the second day, Rai Cinema offered the Roman public a preview of “The Prompt”, a short film made entirely with the help of artificial intelligence by the company Fantomatica, in the presence of director Francesco Frisari.