\u201cIf this tax on American companies is enacted, it would be at odds with the Turnberry Agreement, in which the European Union committed to \u2018address unjustified digital trade barriers\u2019 \u2014 not erect new ones,\u201d Greer said.<\/p>\n
The criticism follows scrutiny by Republicans in Washington of a similar Canadian streaming law requiring tech platforms to financially support domestic cultural production. House Republicans in March introduced legislation<\/a> seeking a U.S. trade investigation into Canada\u2019s Online Streaming Act, arguing it unfairly targets American companies and could justify retaliatory tariffs.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s proposed law<\/a> would require streaming companies and broadcasters to invest at least 8 percent of their annual German revenues into domestic and wider European film and television production, or face financial penalties. Berlin also announced<\/a> plans to nearly double public support for local productions to \u20ac250 million.<\/p>\n Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil defended<\/a> the overhaul in February, saying it would create \u201cplanning certainty for more investment in national and international productions\u201d and send \u201ca clear signal\u201d for Germany\u2019s media industry and \u201ccultural diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n Netflix has pushed back. \u201cIf regulation ultimately makes it harder to invest in ambitious projects and, as a result, fewer titles are produced overall, that benefits neither audiences nor the production location,\u201d Wolf Osthaus, Netflix\u2019s senior global affairs director in Germany, told<\/a> AFP.<\/p>\n The dispute opens another front in increasingly strained U.S.-German relations after Merz accused<\/a> Washington in April of having been \u201chumiliated\u201d by Iran, and U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops<\/a> from Germany at the beginning of May.<\/p>\n John Hewitt Jones contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf this tax on American companies is enacted, it would be at odds with the Turnberry Agreement, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26689,479,393,5,3012,253,9056,26690,4734,8343,629,4940,481],"class_list":["post-25965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-big-tech","tag-donald-trump","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-investment","tag-iran","tag-media","tag-platforms","tag-regulation","tag-tariffs","tag-trade","tag-trade-agreements","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}