A collision between Brussels-style content rules and creative ambition is emerging as one of the central challenges facing Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) as it scales its European business.
Larry Tanz, the streaming giant’s Head of Content for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has called out what he sees as a regulatory environment fundamentally hostile to the kind of bold, audience-driven storytelling that drives growth.
Tanz warned that overly rigid investment obligations could compel Netflix to direct funding toward productions audiences have little interest in watching, undermining the financial logic that underpins the entire model.
He urged European policymakers to replace fragmented rules with consistent incentives that leave creators free to pursue whatever stories they believe deserve to be told.
The pushback comes as Netflix posted 11% year-on-year EMEA revenue growth in the third quarter of 2026, a figure that reflects more than a decade of deepening commitment to locally produced content.
Netflix has poured more than €13bn into European content over the past ten years, and last year pledged an additional €1bn in Spain alone by 2028, underscoring how central the region has become to its global strategy.
The company now operates 10 regional content teams across Europe, a structure built on the premise that authentic, locally rooted storytelling travels further than content designed to please everyone simultaneously.
“Let’s say you try to make a film in Spain and you cast it with people from everywhere and you try to make it for everybody – you end up making it for nobody and nobody watches it,” Tanz said.
He pointed to Squid Game, Netflix’s largest international breakout, as proof that unapologetic cultural specificity, not deliberate global engineering, is what drives worldwide audiences to a title.
Tanz also noted that every Netflix production to achieve genuine global reach first built a loyal following within its own domestic market before crossing borders.
The numbers behind the shift in viewing habits are striking: non-English-language content accounted for under 10% of total viewing on the platform a decade ago, a share that has since grown to more than one third.
Netflix supports that shift with dubbing and subtitling across more than 40 languages, lowering the barrier for audiences to engage with productions from markets far outside their own.
Tanz moved from Los Angeles to Amsterdam in 2019 to lead the European operation, reflecting an early recognition that programming for the continent could not be managed effectively from California.
He stressed that his regional teams bring more than cultural fluency to their roles, noting that a script commissioned today may not reach screens for two years, demanding foresight well beyond whatever is trending at any given moment.
“Also they’re plugged into what’s happening in society, if you develop a film script right now, that film is not going to come out for maybe two years so you can’t just try to play on trends of the moment,” Tanz explained.
With EMEA growth holding firm and European content commanding an ever-larger share of global viewing, the regulatory question is likely to grow louder as Netflix’s footprint across the continent continues to expand.
