Update 2024 BBC iPlayer Europe  – Unfortunately this is unlikely to ever happen now in the near future.  The main driver for this was the European Digital Market which was trying to standardize digital goods and services across the European Union.  The BBC is unlikely to follow through with these requirements when the United Kingdom leaves in a few weeks.  There is a significant logistical problem to be solved of verifying who actually owns a TV license, at the moment they just ask if you have one or not!    There may be some hope that you might be able to watch the BBC from Ireland, depending on what happens with the border negotiations but not from the rest of the EU.

Watch BBC iPlayer in Europe

There’s exciting news for those of us who travel a lot and find it difficult to be parted from the BBC.   At the moment, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you are from if you’re outside the UK then you get blocked from things like the BBC iPlayer and UK Netflix.   Even when you are active license fee payer or have a valid Netflix subscription – copyright issues mean that all that matters is your current physical location.

Not quite in the spirit of the internet, it has always been a source of annoyance that the use of digital services was restricted in this way.  However, there may be light at the end of the tunnel at least for European based media services like the BBC iPlayer and other media sites with a new ruling from the EU.  Basically, the ruling is an attempt to unify the digital market within the European Union – meaning that there are no barriers or borders to using any digital product within Europe.

The idea is that if you pay for something like the UK TV license, which allows you access to all the BBC programming both online and via digital TV then this should also be available within the rest of Europe.  So, you could access the same services from a hotel in France or on holiday in Spain as you could in the UK which is of course perfectly fair.  Yes, you can even stream the BBC online from Ireland.  These EU proposals seem to open the door, or more importantly make it a legal right to be able to access any digital product from anywhere in the EU.

Unfortunately, the timeline is rather unclear for a variety of reasons, one of the main ones is the technical challenges this would require particularly for providers like the BBC.  To make this work the BBC iPlayer would have to completely overhauled in order to provide some sort of verification process which works independent of location.   At the moment BBC iPlayer merely checks your location and basically presumes that if you are in the UK then you are a licence fee payer (although it does ask the question).

The proposal still needs to go to the European parliament and the EU member states for approval with implementation planned for 2017 if it goes through this process.  There are worries that some nations will try and block these changes particularly those like the French who are keen to protect their own culture.

So, it’s potentially a welcome change but I wouldn’t hold your breath just yet for it to happen.  You may be able to enjoy your BBC iPlayer account from France soon!

Update: Of course, 2016 and leaving the EU in 2020 has changed all this.  It’s not clear what will happen with the European Digital laws, at the moment it’s probably safer to assume that none of them will apply to the UK and its organisations and companies.