The EU digital single market as a mission impossible: audio-visual policy conflicts for Estonia

The EU Commission has started to update its Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) as part of its larger push to implement its Digital Single Market (DSM) Strategy. It is expected that this will not be just a light fix for some of the ‘bugs’ in the regulation, but a major overhaul motivated by the significant changes in media systems related mostly to media convergence and globalization. In this context this article offers a small country’s view of these processes. It demonstrates in detail how Estonia, a very small country on the EU periphery, is challenged by the need to develop its positions with regard to the complex processes at the EU level. It discusses the ‘impossible conflicts’ that it encounters when trying to articulate its media policies and EU strategies. It also describes the complexities of developing media policy in a country where different government institutions are shaped by different ideological frameworks, and therefore have different policy goals; and how cultural policy goals tend to be sacrificed when they are in conflict with various techno-economic imperatives.