This Eurobarometer Survey was conducted in the context of the Digital Agenda for
Europe, a flagship initiative of the EU 2020 Strategy. The overall aim of the Digital
Agenda for Europe is to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits from a Digital
Single Market, based on fast and ultra-fast Internet and interoperable applications.
Currently, Europe is still a patchwork of national online markets, and solvable problems
prevent Europeans from enjoying the benefits of a Digital Single Market.
Commercial and cultural content and services need to flow across borders, and this will
be achieved by eliminating regulatory barriers and facilitating electronic payments,
invoicing, dispute resolution and customer trust. The creation of attractive online content
and services and its free circulation inside the EU and across its borders are fundamental
to stimulate growth and create jobs.
The Commission regularly receives complaints from the public with regard to the
territorial limitations of content offers. Service operators from the audiovisual sector, e.g.
VOD (video on demand) service providers, complain particularly about complicated rights
clearance processes, which make it especially risky to set up innovative content offers.

The objective of this survey is to gain a better understanding of the market for content
distributed across borders in the European Union, including, in particular, the extent of
use and interest in such content and the reason for the use and interest. The
Eurobarometer Survey has been conducted among a representative sample of the
general public across the EU.
The fieldwork for this survey was carried out between 13 April and 2 May 2011.
This report covers the 27 Member States. The results are presented for the EU27 and
when significant the 15 old Member States and the 12 new Member States. Comparisons
have been made with the survey conducted earlier in the year, in February/March 20111
on Internet access.
The data have been weighted on individuals over 15 years of age or EU households
depending on the nature of the question. The socio-demographic analysis focuses
primarily on age, gender, education and ability to pay household bills.

The main themes addressed in this report are:

• The types of technology citizens use to access audiovisual content and the type of content they prefer to watch and listen to
• Current use of foreign content (by which is meant content transmitted from outside the country) and the barriers to use
• Interest in receiving foreign content, from which originating countries and willingness to pay
• Interest in receiving home content when abroad and willingness to pay
• Underlying reasons for interest or lack of interest in cross-border content and the preferred format for cross-border content

In the course of this Eurobarometer survey, 26,825 European citizens aged 15 and
above were interviewed by the TNS Opinion & Social network between 13 April and 2
May 2011 in all 27 European Union Member States. The methodology used is that of
surveys as carried out by the Directorate General for Communication (“Research and
Political Analysis” Unit). A technical note on the methodology for interviews conducted
by the institutes within the TNS Opinion & Social network is annexed to this report. This
note indicates the interview methods and the confidence intervals. As well as assessing
opinion at EU and individual country level, the survey also provides demographic analysis
to help understand how some sections of European society view access to and payment
for creative content in the Single Market differently from others.