Note that while certainly a step in the right direction, this is unfortunately not what I expected from the headline.
Specifically, it still allows market segmentation by country, i. e. if your country of residence is Germany, a streaming service aimed at the Irish market may still refuse to do business with you.
The change is only that, if you have a subscription to the streaming service from Ireland, you will still be able to access it when you travel to Croatia (or any other EU country).
It reminds me of mobile phone & data roaming rules, which use the same pattern. There, I'm more understanding of the need for continued market segmentation: If you'd require Romanian telco operators to extend their offers to citizen of Luxembourg with its dramatically higher cost of living, the market would obviously become unstable rather rapidly.
With streaming, the same dynamic may be at play – possibly to the degree requiring this arrangement. But personally, I'm interested less in taking advantage of lower prices in other markets, but getting access to content that providers currently don't offer in my market. Not sure if the situation has improved, but last I checked streaming services often did not even have the english-language originals. I ain't going to go back to dubbed TV.
Let's hope more countries use their EU membership as mostly-wisely as the Irish did and quickly catch up economically. (That'll solve not my TV troubles, but should also greatly diminish those fears of EU immigrants. Note how silly it'd sound to warn against the poor Irish dragging down France today, even though it was a theme when Ireland joined the EU)
The author of the OP article notes this as well, but seems hopeful that this is just one more step in creating a single digital market in Europe as well:
> He added; ”Agreements are now needed on our other proposals to modernise E.U. copyright rules and ensure a wider access to creative content across borders. I count on the European Parliament and Member States to make it happen.”
> That looks like a reference to the overhaul of copyright announced mid-September which, at least in the European Commission proposal, would see the “country of origin” principle currently in place for cable and satellite programming extended to broadcasters’ online services. In other words, if a broadcaster is licensed to serve one jurisdiction in the E.U. with an online service, they would be authorized to serve that online service to all E.U. member states.
Emphasis mine; that part looks interesting. If that happens, might that mean that Netflix can legally serve content licensed in Germany to customers in Belgium despite not having the redistribution rights for that country? That is, you can't license films or series for redistribution in just one EU country, you either license it for all or none. Makes sense given the scale of the EU.
Or it could mean that Netflix cannot cheaply licence a Portuguese show for Belgium, because they would have to effectively licence the whole regional block even though "everything except Portugal" would be orders of magnitude cheaper.
The same thing happens with sports all the time, very expensive to license in the home market, cheap as packaging peanuts in foreign markets (and used in pretty much the same way, for filling up inconvenient voids).
Previously, distributors had an incentive to popularize content across is home market boundary, with forced full region licensing this goes away.
(Edit: "effectively licence the whole block". The whole "may refuse to do business, but must stream everywhere" thing seems awfully muddy, my take is that it would be entirely to the rights holder wether they would consider a licence for that "Irish residents only" an expensive EU wide license or a much cheaper Ireland only)
Certainly, there is that drawback, but on the whole Europeans (myself included) will benefit. In terms of content Netflix has very little that is desired exclusively in certain countries; most of its backlog is English films and series, and sports is not Netflix' expertise.
For the customers this should be a welcome change; nothing is more annoying than a global digital services provider deciding for you that you cannot watch content X because you live in country Y. Let me choose if I want to watch Portuguese sitcoms instead of unilaterally deciding that all Dutch don't like those.
While I do like Netflix' globally available original material, I also want a legal way to enjoy the long tail of film/television content. This kind of legislature helps.
> The change is only that, if you have a subscription to the streaming service from Ireland, you will still be able to access it when you travel to Croatia (or any other EU country).
So you want to force people to do business together by using the power of the law aka State violence? Shouldn't trade and labour be a voluntary thing? I thought we agreed on the immorality of the idea of forced labour a while ago.
You're not forcing anyone to do anything. You're just giving them additional requirements. I don't see how that's any more forceful from any other regulation you have to respect in order to run a legal business.
Reporting, investigating, coming up with a solution, creating the appropriate law, and enforcing it is a lengthy and costly process.
I hope non-contributors to the EU project are not going to leach on the effort and money the EU members are putting on this. The UK is taking with it, via "Great Repeal Bill", all these laws (with some to be ditched in the future, at their discretion). We need to ensure that:
* the UK has properly contributed to the costs of creating the legislation body: any pending bills must be claimed
* the UK is not leaching on the EU, by enjoying the benefits of these laws without contributing to the recurring enforcement costs.
It seems the UK is going for a a Hard Brexit, and they will (I assume) want to opt-in in several beneficial schemes. In this case, a "Cross-Border Access to Streaming Services" yearly bill, amount to be negotiated, must be levied on the UK.
It is not clear that the EU should have any interest in dealing on this kind of detail with one of our partners, when we are doing this in bulk within the EU. The more sensible outcome, from the EU point of view, is that the UK is excluded from this scheme, otherwise the administrative burden would blow out of proportion.
One of the weirder parts of Brexit, is that the long run up to leaving was fuelled mostly by people complaining about these very sensible harmonizations of existing laws between member nations.
In fact, making up lies about these laws was basically Boris Johnson's job at one point. And the EU had to publish a blog tracking the various myths that he and his fellow right-wing journalists invented in a bizarre war on pragmatic realities of free trade: http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/
But now, as you say, they want to take all the output of this boring but necessary bureaucratic (this word is not intended in the insulting pejorative sense!) work with them. Presumably they'll need to find some laws to repeal and replace with good old fashioned British equivalents, just to save face. Though, if they want to still export goods to the EU then they'll need to comply with all the regulations, which means many companies will need to comply with potentially incompatible regulations from two different sources. Ironies abound.
It was hard for anyone in the UK to make sense of how efficient the EU was in regards to making laws.
The general consensus was that they were too slow and didn't go far enough. Last summer there was a lot of talk about bee die off and what to do about it. The EU was simply too slow to do much about it. Banning pesticides or whatever. With most of these laws that people feel passionately about (farming, housing, jobs, energy, pollution, etc) the EU is so so so so slow.
It sounds like you move in non-standard circles, of progressive people who've accidentally absorbed right-wing propaganda. They'll perhaps get a shock when the UK very quickly moves to rip out consumer and environmental protections that it regularly fought to prevent passing while in the EU.
Note that the UK is perfectly allowed to implement additional regulations on top of what the EU provides. If the issue was too little regulation, as in your example with the bees, the British Government could provide what additional regulation it needs to.
You can implement regulations that affect other country's companies just as much as your own - what you can't do is ban an entire country from competing in your market. If you want to regulate British beef, you have to implement just as much regulation on all other EU beef.
Simply phrasing discussions in terms of "leachers" is immediately toxic to European unity. The question of who's contributing more can be toxic even when it's just a bunch of friends paying a restaurant bill; it's far more toxic when there are billions at stake.
This is part of why the Greek Euro crisis has dragged on so much. If there is to be a single currency, there must be a single bank resolution mechanism, and there must be a means of addressing fiscal imbalances. I'm still somewhat surprised that Greece hasn't left the Euro yet.
I understand that my use of the term leach is confrontational, but I am not ready to back down from it for several reasons:
* I am disappointed at the role that the UK has played in the EU, how you have dragged your feet, how you have pushed for EU policies that, long time later, you have complained about them as being EU imposed. As a short list, I must mention opening negotiations with Turkey, expansion to the East, renouncing to east Europeans quotes by your own decision, and specially blocking legislation about financial markets.
* I am angry about how the EU has been portrayed by your media and politicians during the last 30 years.
* Lack of goodwill: the UK has been given special treatment. What has been your response? To continue complaining, and now to withdraw from the union, putting it at existential risk.
* Outright lies during the referendum campaign: one thing is to say "we think the UK will do bad outside the EU" (an opinion of the remainers), the other is to say "we send 350 million pound to the EU each week" (an outright lie by the leavers)
And a very specific reason why I think the UK is actually trying to justify its leaching, that's why I call it like it is: you (your politicians, a big part of your media) feel "entitled" to a special relationship, and particularly insist that the UK should get free access to the internal market (eat your cake and keep it). This I call plain and simply "leaching", and I will call it that as long as you keep on pretending that you are entitled to anything. The EU and the UK are going to negotiate what they want their future relationship to be. The old agreements are void, and nobody is entitled to anything. Stop pretending that the UK knows what the EU internal interests are, we can very well come up with our own priority list. We are all adults here. If we decide that it is not in our interest to give free access to our internal market (as I think it is the case), stop pretending to know better.
So, if you want a better tone from the EU side, use a more respectful tone from your side.
> I am angry about how the EU has been portrayed by your media and politicians during the last 30 years
Frankly, so am I. Blaming the UK in general is about as productive as blaming all Americans for Trump.
The UK has a big lead in fake news, to the point that the Daily Mail has now been prohibited by wikipedia from being considered a "source". Nobody really has a good idea what to do about this, and the Opposition have become uniquely useless.
I understand that there are lots of pro-EU people in the UK, and I also accept respectful and factual critique of the EU, also from leavers, as long as it is balanced and reported truthfully. The EU is definitely not perfect.
And I think, in all, the EU is losing big with the UK's decision to leave, but we need to move on, otherwise the current political climate can bring about the demise of the EU. There are also good side-effects of the UK leaving, namely the possibility to proceed with political integration without being continuously blocked.
In this context, I think there is little the EU can do to support remainers, even though we are really saddened by their impossible situation. One of the suggested ideas, to give EU citizenship to those UK citizens that request it, sounds very good on paper but I think is very difficult to implement in practice, for two reasons:
- how do you give rights to people who are not invested in the project? I am 100% in favor of giving EU-citizenship, and voting rights, to all persons living in EU countries, but not in countries outside the EU, otherwise what is the point?
- do we really want to give rabid eurosceptics a say on the future of the EU? People whose explicit goal is to work towards the destruction of the EU. Should Trump vote too?
I think that the UK is going to be in for a rude awakening with Brexit. Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland all have somewhat different agreements with the EU, but at the end of the day, they've had to accept a lot that they don't necessarily like in order to get the benefits they do like.
Well yes, outstanding bills should be paid. But I don't think the UK has been leaching, in fact the UK has been a net contributor to the EU for a long period of time [1]. As we are leaving the EU will we in some way get to reclaim some of the assets paid for over the period of time? Do we get the roof of the parliament in Strasbourg?
Until we've actually left, we are bound by the rules of the EU which may include this. And given the current alignment of rules I wouldn't imagine it would be a huge burden. Once we've left, well paying associated costs may be a sensible thing to do, but that's for us to decide!
> in fact the UK has been a net contributor to the EU for a long period of time
Your membership fee was lower (per-capita, per-GDP) than other countries. That membership fee has bought you services, the same services that other countries have been enjoying, and paying at a premium compared to the UK. The UK has been a member of the EU by its own decision for over 30 years. Nothing to complain about there. On the other hand, EU members which have been paying premium membership price should very seriously consider adding to the exit bill whatever rebates have been granted to the UK during all these years.
> As we are leaving the EU will we in some way get to reclaim some of the assets paid for over the period of time? Do we get the roof of the parliament in Strasbourg?
When I am renting an apartment, and I need to pay for something that needs repair, I do not ask for money back whenever I leave. There may be some assets that you have a right to claim a stake in, though. There are also some open bills. That is a matter of exit negotiations.
By the way, who is paying for the financial burden that the negotiations themselves are going to put in the EU? I hope that is also a matter of negotiations, and since it is a UK decision to leave (which we respect), the UK must contribute specially to those costs.
> And given the current alignment of rules I wouldn't imagine it would be a huge burden
1. Since there will not be automatic law alignment, we can not guarantee this long-term
2. There won't be a framework to enforce this, since the EU will have no jurisdiction in the UK, and vice versa. Creating a third-party enforcement framework seems too big of a burden.
> Once we've left, well paying associated costs may be a sensible thing to do, but that's for us to decide!
For you ... and for the EU. As said, I do not think it is in the interest of the EU to deal with issues at these level of detail with each potential partner. We already deal with this at the EU level, put it in to law, and let the common EU enforcement mechanisms do the management. No need to duplicate this structure for each partner and each scheme that our partners would like to enjoy.
A better solution, discussed at length, would be to negotiate access to the EU market (which includes these kind of schemes) with the UK. But this has already been ruled out by Theresa May, since it assumes acceptance of the four freedoms.
Net contributions are misleading. The members pay a fee according to their population and GDP. According to that, the UK is paying little.
What happens with those paid fees is complex, but agreed between the members. Roughly described:
* the fees go to the EU budget
* some of the fees are used to pay for EU administration
* some of the fees are used to pay for EU projects
* one big program is "Investment in depressed regions, EU-wide". The UK is not a big beneficiary of this program because fortunately its regions are relatively rich. Some regions are poor, and they do receive funds.
The reason why the UK is net contributor is because it is a rich country.
Its gross contribution is small, GDP and capita-wise.
Well, the UK has massively benefited from its EU membership. I don't think we'll have that much money around after we leave, our trade will take a hit, our companies will have less access to EU talent (which is massively needed in IT at least), so we will be less competitive.
I do think all that extra money we paid in the EU was easily recovered.
It's going to be ironic when we have less money around than before paying into the EU :(
I agree we had a reasonably good deal - but the net contributions weren't massively different from other large nations (France, Germany, Italy) [1]. In my view that's very different from leaching.
> When I am renting an apartment, and I need to pay for something that needs repair, I do not ask for money back whenever I leave. There may be some assets that you have a right to claim a stake in, though. There are also some open bills. That is a matter of exit negotiations.
I don't think anyone sensible would be suggesting the EU refund all the contributions made whilst we were members. As for negotiations, I wouldn't fancy being a horse in the near future.
> By the way, who is paying for the financial burden that the negotiations themselves are going to put in the EU? I hope that is also a matter of negotiations, and since it is a UK decision to leave (which we respect), the UK must contribute specially to those costs.
The EU itself devised the mechanism for leaving the EU so this should have probably been specified at the time - if it wasn't then it probably wasn't a great piece of legislation.
> For you ... and for the EU.
Yes, I only mentioned the UK as I imagine the EU isn't going to bend massively so it will be more a case of whether the UK wishes to agree to certain terms set out by the EU rather than crafting a UK-specific deal. Though I guess we'll find out.
Of course, I understand nobody from the UK wants anything from the EU, that's why you voted out.
Just in case at some point you do want something, remember that there are associated costs, that laws, rights and enforcement do not fall down from the sky.
And that the EU does not necessarily need to be inclined to offer access to those "services", not even by paying a fee, since doing this kind of deals per-service, per-partner is much too complex. We have an organization to simplify that kind of agreements, it is called the EU. We offer you associate status, by accepting some rules. You are free to accept or refuse the offer, of course.
What you are not welcome to do, is to use what the EU has created and maintains, without accepting any rules.
I find it funny that Theresa May insists that she is interested in trading with the stable and rich internal market. What she does not mention, is that a stable and rich internal market does not exist without some rules, that means, without the EU.
The problem is with the hectoring tone of the poster who seems to assume that the UK owes the rest of EU something, which I do not believe is the case.
If the EU gets easy access to streamed UK media, they will be the winnners. Many British TV shows are enjoyed across the continent; you cannot say the same thing about French, German, or Italian productions.
The problem with the EU is that they now have the goal of becoming the United States of Europe and eliminating national soverignty in most senses of the word. [1] This isn't good or bad just many EU officials statements of their goals. [1] However, it is something relatively new and not what the EU started out to be when a lot of members joined up. [2]
If the EU had said from the beginning, "we want to create a United States of Europe" and the people in each new member country had democratically voted for that we wouldn't be having a lot of the problems we have right now.
But its an assault on freedom to try to accumulate central power while decimating local democratic processes, especially for all the member states who did not join under such pretences.
It makes the affronts even more egregious when you realize EU citizens have little democratic control over the the European Commission and European Council which accounts for 2/3 of the European legislative body.
Whether you're for a United States of Europe or not these are issues we need to address if we want to make real progress in the EU.
> the UK is not leaching on the EU, by enjoying the benefits of these laws without contributing to the recurring enforcement costs.
IMHO attempting to punish the UK by refusing to cooperate with them when its mutually beneficial to both parties is not a route I'd like to see us take. In general economic terms, it will almost always be in the EUs interest to work with the UK and not against them. The EU enjoys the benefits of many laws in the USA and elsewhere, for instance that a subscriber to a service in California can use that service in Georgia. Still, it would be absurd to assume the EU should pay a price to help enforce that law.
> However, it is something relatively new and not what the EU started out to be when a lot of members joined up. [2]
This is a lie. The Treaty of Rome of 1957(!) establishing the European Economic Community already contained the phrase "ever-closer union" in its preamble (though admittedly only in French, German, Dutch and Italian).
> If the EU had said from the beginning, "we want to create a United States of Europe" and the people in each new member country had democratically voted for that we wouldn't be having a lot of the problems we have right now.
This is exactly what the British voted to join after de Gaulle died and couldn’t keep up the resistance any longer.
> It makes the affronts even more egregious when you realize EU citizens have little democratic control over the the European Commission and European Council which accounts for 2/3 of the European legislative body.
This is another lie. The commission has to be accepted by the European Parliament, which directly represents the people and the council is made up of the governments of the member countries. If the people in your country have "little democratic control" over your government, there’s your problem. Hint: blaming the EU won’t help.
We really don’t need the whole concept of ‘alternative facts’ over here now, too, do we?
You are calling my assertions lies, when you aren't citing anything to back up any of your assertions. That's not very civil debate and won't get us anywhere.
> This is a lie. The Treaty of Rome of 1957(!) ....
The treaty of Paris 1951 [1] was established on the basis of economic trade in coal and steel, which was followed by The Treaty of Rome 1957 which established the European Economic Community which aimed to to do just that create an economic community. [2] Now, you can argue about what the people who set this up wanted and I'd agree many (Churchhill, Jean Monnet, etc) [3,4] did want a United States of Europe with a centralized European Army [4]. You could possibly say people voted on this since some of their leaders believed in this idea, and some of those leaders were elected in a democratic process (notably not Churchhill or Monnet) [5], but its a pretty long stretch.
> This is exactly what the British voted to join after de Gaulle
If you mean the EEC membership referendum of 1975, this is the actual question the Brits voted on "Do you think that the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the Common Market)?" [6].
That doesn't seem much like voting on being a member state of a United States of Europe to me. But maybe there are multiple ways of interpreting that, still newspapers referred to those in the yes camp as "pro-marketeers" or "Pro-Market" [8] which seems to suggest it was about economic trade and not so much political aspects of giving up national sovereignty.
I'd like to provide you with more facts about your other assertions but I don't have the time. Maybe someone else will.
> You are calling my assertions lies, when you aren't citing anything to back up any of your assertions. That's not very civil debate and won't get us anywhere.
I also didn’t cite sources for my assertion that de Gaulle died and that the UK joined the EEC, all of these things are well-known facts. But do allow me to cite my source, namely from the preamble of the 1957 treaty, here in its English translation:
HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS, THE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, THE PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, THE PRESIDENT OF THE ITALIAN REPUBLIC, HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE GRAND DUCHESS OF LUXEMBOURG, HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF THE NETHERLANDS,
DETERMINED to establish the foundations of an ever closer union among the European peoples,
> If you mean the EEC membership referendum of 1975, this is the actual question the Brits voted on "Do you think that the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the Common Market)?" [6].
> That doesn't seem much like voting on being a member state of a United States of Europe to me. But maybe there are multiple ways of interpreting that, still newspapers referred to those in the yes camp as "pro-marketeers" or "Pro-Market" [8] which seems to suggest it was about economic trade and not so much political aspects of giving up national sovereignty.
The EEC was founded by the Treaty of Rome and literally the first sentence of the preamble of that treaty contains the phrase "ever-closer union". Please do explain how any reasonable person could think it was not about laying the foundation for a United States of Europe? You may argue that the UK-internal politics and media misrepresented the whole thing horribly, but you don’t fix that by leaving the EU.
> It makes the affronts even more egregious when you realize EU citizens have little democratic control over the the European Commission and European Council which accounts for 2/3 of the European legislative body.
Both the European Commission and the European Council are just the democratically elected national governments. So I do not get why you want more national sovereignty, but see problems with the Commission and the Council. They are basically the organs in the EU that ensure that national sovereignty is kept. Without them the directly democratically elected European Parliament cannot do anything (which I think should be changed).
> The problem with the EU is that they now have the goal of becoming the United States of Europe and eliminating national soverignty in most senses of the word. [1] This isn't good or bad just many EU officials statements of their goals. [1] However, it is something relatively new and not what the EU started out to be when a lot of members joined up. [2]
> If the EU had said from the beginning, "we want to create a United States of Europe" and the people in each new member country had democratically voted for that we wouldn't be having a lot of the problems we have right now.
But people can democratically vote for it. You can elect your MEPs directly and you can elect the rest (council, etc) by voting in your national elections. Don't want the United States of Europe? Fair enough, vote for parties that oppose it. People are doing it.
> But its an assault on freedom to try to accumulate central power while decimating local democratic processes, especially for all the member states who did not join under such pretences.
That would be an assault on freedom if it was true, but it's not. If any, the EU reinforces democracy and enhances personal freedom. People rule the EU.
> It makes the affronts even more egregious when you realize EU citizens have little democratic control over the the European Commission and European Council which accounts for 2/3 of the European legislative body.
People have full control of it. Vote in your country for a party that will support your ideals in the EU:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission - Formed by one member of each state (each Commissioner is first nominated by their member state in consultation with the Commission President, although the President holds little practical power to force a change in candidate).
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/european-council/ - The members of the European Council are the heads of state or government of the 28 EU member states, the European Council President and the President of the European Commission.
> Whether you're for a United States of Europe or not these are issues we need to address if we want to make real progress in the EU.
Happy to see people bringing up these topics, I however think you might be misinformed. The EU is one of the most democratic organisations out there and, if actions speak louder than words, the EU has got a very decent track of upholding people's rights against lobbies and big corps.
> IMHO attempting to punish the UK by refusing to cooperate with them when its mutually beneficial to both parties is not a route I'd like to see us take. In general economic terms, it will almost always be in the EUs interest to work with the UK and not against them. The EU enjoys the benefits of many laws in the USA and elsewhere, for instance that a subscriber to a service in California can use that service in Georgia. Still, it would be absurd to assume the EU should pay a price to help enforce that law.
No one is trying to punish the UK, but I think op might have worded his point rather confusingly.
The UK is of course free to copy and paste the EU law. Anyone can do it (and I hope they do) - there is however a problem: How do you enforce it?
Is the UK strong enough of a market to force Netflix or Amazon to change?
Should the EU press Netflix to include the UK in the no-borders streaming zone? If you think the answer to this latest question is yes, then the UK has to contribute.
And, by the way, how different is your "refusing to cooperate" than op's "refusing to contribute to the recurring enforcement costs" - should contribution with the UK be free? Can you have your cake and eat it?
This is huge. This is the reason why my wife and I ditched Netflix and other streaming services we've tried. I'm guessing a lot of Europeans are like us, spend significant time living and working in other countries or at least have family members in various other countries which you visit a couple times a year. And not being able to access content you're paying when you're on a vacation in France, or visiting Family in Poland over Christmas, and especially not in the all the languages you know are available on the platform is the most annoying pain point.
Of course we live on the German / French border now and previously on the German / Poland one, so maybe I'm just an outlier here and this isn't such a big deal...
I actually enjoyed the fact that with netflix I'd get different choices of movies and shows every time I'd cross a border... It kept their library a bit more interesting :)
That said I fully support this decision. It's a good move for the EU and I have no love for the MPAA and the Europe's movie and TV industry.
I experienced this last summer (2016).
I was in Portugal, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Portuguese's Netflix still had a tv series that the UK one had ditched.
The pleasantness didn't last long when I realised that my poor knowledge of Portuguese wasn't enough to read the subtitles!
Netflix launched globally in January 2015. With the exception of a few countries (like China, North Korea, Syria, and a few others) Netflix is available world wide now. The catalog still varies by country though but nearly all of the Netflix Originals are available world wide.
Yeah, right now Netflix is available to you basically everywhere, but the regional licensing means you get to see only the content available in the country you are presently in, not where you are a subscriber.
Of course, to prevent customers from pretending to be somewhere else, VPN access is mostly blocked now.
Steps like this are important for the EU to achieve the market scale that the US currently has. It's baby steps but then remember that not that long ago the US had roaming fees for mobile phones.
Definitely a move in a good direction. I wonder how long until this actually "happens". Does anyone know? With these things it always seems like they are done until you realize some pushback from the industry stopped it in its tracks.
Specifically, it still allows market segmentation by country, i. e. if your country of residence is Germany, a streaming service aimed at the Irish market may still refuse to do business with you.
The change is only that, if you have a subscription to the streaming service from Ireland, you will still be able to access it when you travel to Croatia (or any other EU country).
It reminds me of mobile phone & data roaming rules, which use the same pattern. There, I'm more understanding of the need for continued market segmentation: If you'd require Romanian telco operators to extend their offers to citizen of Luxembourg with its dramatically higher cost of living, the market would obviously become unstable rather rapidly.
With streaming, the same dynamic may be at play – possibly to the degree requiring this arrangement. But personally, I'm interested less in taking advantage of lower prices in other markets, but getting access to content that providers currently don't offer in my market. Not sure if the situation has improved, but last I checked streaming services often did not even have the english-language originals. I ain't going to go back to dubbed TV.
Let's hope more countries use their EU membership as mostly-wisely as the Irish did and quickly catch up economically. (That'll solve not my TV troubles, but should also greatly diminish those fears of EU immigrants. Note how silly it'd sound to warn against the poor Irish dragging down France today, even though it was a theme when Ireland joined the EU)