Sustainability of Streaming Everywhere and Nowhere: The EU’s Blind Spot in the Governance of Video-on-Demand platforms

This paper investigates the policy challenges faced by the European Union in creating a consistent governance framework for the sustainability of video-on-demand (VoD) platforms. While these platforms have become central components of the European audiovisual media landscape (Koulesz, 2017) their growing environmental footprint, stemming from production, data centres, and end-user consumption, remains largely overlooked in European policy debates (Efoui-Hess, 2019 ; Marks et al. 2021). At the EU level, multiple regulatory instruments touch upon environmental and digital concerns, including the Green Deal, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and Creative Europe (Munch, 2025). While these initiatives establish general sustainability expectations, none specifically target the VoD sector, and they do not adequately integrate audiovisual and digital dimensions (Psychogiopoulou, 2016; Gassman & Gouttefarde, 2021). Consequently, there is no dedicated EU-level framework for regulating the ecological impact of streaming, leaving a significant governance gap in a sector that is increasingly transnational in nature (Munch, 2025). Drawing on a comparative cross-national mapping conducted within the Horizon Europe project StreamSCAPES, the paper examines regulatory measures, greening initiatives, and governance practices in nine European and associated countries (AT, BE, DK, FR, NL, MK, PL, RO, SE), and situates them within wider EU-level frameworks such as the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the Digital Services Act, and the European Green Deal. The analysis is based on a mixed-methods approach combining desk research, institutional reports, academic sources, and semi-structured interviews with policy experts and lawmakers. Based on an assessment of the VoD value chain and a multi-level inventory of policy interventions, the findings reveal that there are distinct logics leading to divergent obligations, incentives, and environmental requirements for platforms. These differences are reinforced by varying interpretations of sustainability in the audiovisual sector, ranging from carbon-accounting requirements to green production incentives or the complete absence of environmental measures (Stephens et al. 2021; Sorensen & Noonan, 2022). The paper argues that this fragmented landscape is not primarily the result of political resistance from Member States, but rather a structural effect of the EU’s limited competences in the cultural and audiovisual domains. National measures, while innovative in certain cases, remain isolated and fail to produce a coherent European policy. Ultimately, this paper contends that a dedicated European approach to VoD sustainability is normatively relevant. By integrating environmental concerns across audiovisual and digital policies, the EU could enhance policy coherence, promote best practices, and guide industry behaviour, thereby aligning the sector with broader climate objectives. In the absence of such a framework, sustainability in VoD remains “everywhere and nowhere”: recognised as important but addressed inconsistently, leaving a significant sector structurally under-governed. The paper contributes to debates on multi-level governance, the limits of EU competences, and the normative imperative for European coordination in digital and audiovisual media policy.