Europe’s media sovereignty is not only about controlling infrastructure or governing data and AI responsibly. Those are essential foundations. The next question is economic: can European media organisations turn greater control over their digital assets into the ability to decide how they are used, on what terms and for whose benefit?
Technical control does not automatically create economic power. European media organisations can improve their data, identify their works and clarify rights information while still negotiating with global platforms and technology companies from a position of weakness. Fragmentation across national markets and media subsectors compounds this imbalance. Initiatives such as TEMS aim to bring organisations together around shared standards and governance, creating better conditions for cooperation across the media ecosystem.
Better identification is part of the answer, but it is not rights control. Persistent identifiers such as ISAN help connect audiovisual works to their associated information, but identification alone does not establish ownership or licensing authority. Productions involve multiple creators, producers, broadcasters and other rightsholders, whose interests may be managed individually or through collective management organisations. Knowing which work is being used is only the beginning. Economic agency requires knowing who can authorise its use, under which conditions, and how those conditions can be upheld.
This becomes particularly urgent with AI. The challenge is not simply whether European content can be licensed for AI training, but how it is used across different AI processes, including training, fine-tuning and inference. The same content can create value in different ways, and those uses may call for different conditions and forms of remuneration. It is whether rightsholders can identify relevant uses, exercise their rights and participate appropriately in the value their assets help create. There are wider implications too: AI services can become new intermediaries between media organisations and audiences, raising questions about editorial integrity, media pluralism and who controls the distribution of information. But sovereignty also depends on sustaining the human creation on which this ecosystem relies. Cultural works still need creators, just as original reporting depends on journalists who gather, verify, analyse and report information. Transparency, mechanisms for appropriate remuneration and effective enforcement are therefore essential.
Appropriate remuneration does not mean that every exchange must be commercial. Archives, cultural organisations and public-service media also serve research, education, cultural access and wider public purposes. Their value extends beyond market exploitation. Sovereignty means retaining the capacity to decide who can access content, for what purpose and under which conditions. It also means ensuring that smaller organisations can participate without disproportionate costs.
European data spaces can help create these conditions. In TEMS, shared governance frameworks and tools being developed through the Policy Library support the definition of access and usage conditions, including geographical, commercial and AI-related restrictions, as well as pricing conditions. Exchange records can improve transparency and traceability, but do not guarantee compliance or control over subsequent uses. Monitoring subsequent use and enforcing rights therefore require appropriate organisational, auditing and legal mechanisms.
Digital sovereignty becomes economic sovereignty when European media organisations can exercise their rights, cooperate to defend shared interests, negotiate on meaningful terms and ensure that an appropriate share of the value created also reaches the creators and rightsholders whose work sustains the media ecosystem. Economic sovereignty is therefore connected to cultural sovereignty: Europe needs not only to retain control over its existing cultural assets, but to sustain the human creativity and journalism as well as corresponding financing that produce new culture and information. The ambition is not simply to make European content and data more accessible to the digital economy, but to ensure that Europe’s media sector remains an active, influential and sustainable participant in shaping it.