Investment obligations for global streamers as a wind of hope for the peripheral markets in Europe: The cases of Croatia and Poland

Confronted with the transformative effects of global streaming services, many countries have decided to introduce investment obligations for players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. In this article, we analyse whether investment obligations for transnational streamers as policy measures yield any significant effects in Croatia and Poland. These are the only two cases in Central and East Europe (CEE) where investment obligations were fully implemented by the end of 2024. Several other CEE countries initiated the policy cycle, but such policies ended up blocked either in the policy-formulation phase or in the policy-implementation phase. Relying on insights from structured industry workshops, interviews and document analysis, our analysis shows that national policy responses to global streamers influence the shift of markets towards or away from being peripheral. The analysis suggests that the European Union’s (EU’s) Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) has highlighted imbalances in Europe, where many CEE nations remain confined to peripheral positions.