Travelers and tourists moving across the European Union will no longer have to leave their subscriptions to services like Netflix at home under EU proposals aimed at eroding barriers to digital content. Delivering on its Digital Single Market strategy, the European Commission (EC) today presented a proposal to allow Europeans to travel with their online content and an action plan to modernise EU copyright rules.

At present, Europeans travelling within the EU may be cut off from online services providing films, sports broadcasts, music, e-books or games that they have paid for in their home country. Today's proposed Regulation on the cross-border portability of online content services addresses these restrictions in order to allow EU residents to travel with the digital content they have purchased or subscribed to at home. Cross-border portability, a new EU right for consumers, is expected to be a reality in 2017, the same year as the end of roaming charges in the EU.

In addition, the Commission today outlineed its vision of a modern EU copyright framework. This "political preview" will be translated into legislative proposals and policy initiatives in the next six months, taking into account all inputs from several public consultations.