President Donald Trump is escalating his battle with TV networks by laying the groundwork to pull their broadcast licenses if they air college football games that compete with the annual Army-Navy game. Trump signed an executive order on Friday directing Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to review whether the “public interest” requirements that TV licensees agree to uphold should include preserving an exclusive programming time slot for the historic rivalry game between West Point cadets and midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy. Trump signed the order after presenting a trophy to the Navy football team, which won last year’s contest, at the White House on Friday. The order appears to grant Carr the bandwidth to revoke licenses for any broadcasters who schedule a college football game “in a manner that directly conflicts with the Army-Navy Game,” which has been broadcast on CBS since 1996. In 2024, the network signed a new deal to broadcast the game through 2038. The game is traditionally played on the second Saturday in December. Trump appeared to acknowledge the limits to which the order could be enforced to protect the game, which he’s regularly attended in person as president. “Of course, we’ll probably get sued at some point,” Trump said at the White House on Friday. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The order further empowers Carr, who attended Friday’s trophy presentation, to pressure the networks into airing — or not airing — certain programming. After Carr suggested in September he could suspend ABC’s broadcast license following comments from Jimmy Kimmel about the killing of Charlie Kirk, the network briefly took Kimmel’s show off the air. Carr’s strict interpretation of the “equal time” rule, which requires some TV programs to grant opposing political candidates equivalent time on their shows, spooked CBS into keeping Stephen Colbert’s interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico from airing. And Carr’s threats appear to have worked; Democrats are growing increasingly wary of booking their candidates on TV programs for fear of FCC retribution. Carr said he plans to work with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to enforce the order. “America’s Game stands as a symbol of excellences and our great national sprit [sic],” Carr said in a statement. “It is important that we continue to reserve a window of time on the second Saturday in December exclusively for this important event.”

Avertissement : le sondage dont nous vous dévoilons les résultats est une photo des rapports de forces à un instant T et ne présage pas des possibles évolutions lors des dernières heures de campagne. PARIS — Après avoir pris l’avantage lors du premier tour, en recueillant 37,98% des voix, Emmanuel Grégoire semble en bonne position pour transformer l’essai dimanche. Le candidat socialiste est crédité de 48% des intentions de vote pour le second tour, en progression de 10 points, dans le sondage Cluster 17* dévoilé en exclusivité par POLITICO ce vendredi. L’ancien premier adjoint d’Anne Hidalgo devancerait ainsi de 7 points sa principale adversaire, Rachida Dati (41%), à la tête d’une liste d’union de la droite et du centre — elle progresserait toutefois d’environ 15 points par rapport au premier tour, où elle a obtenu 25,46% des voix. Presque stable, en troisième position avec 11% des intentions de vote, la candidate Insoumise Sophia Chikirou n’est pas en capacité de jouer les arbitres. BALLE AU CENTRE Grégoire parviendrait donc à creuser l’écart avec Dati, bien que celle-ci ait fusionné sa liste avec une partie de celle du candidat Horizons et Renaissance, Pierre-Yves Bournazel, et qu’elle bénéficie du retrait de Sarah Knafo (Reconquête), qui avait recueilli 10% des voix. Cela s’explique notamment parce qu’une majorité (57%) des électeurs de “PYB” se reporterait sur le candidat de l’union de la gauche plutôt que sur sa rivale (42%). “A ce stade, le centre gauche et une bonne partie du centre votent plutôt Grégoire, ce qui fait la différence dans une ville comme Paris, qui vote plutôt à gauche”, analyse Jean-Yves Dormagen, président de Cluster 17. C’est ce que prouve l’analyse des clusters (la méthodologie de l’institut). Chez les “modérés”, l’ancienne ministre de la Culture est largement distancée (21% contre 78% pour Grégoire). Même constat chez les électeurs se disant “socio-démocrates” et “socio-républicains”, où le député de Paris est hégémonique (85% contre 14%). Dati profite en revanche du report quasi complet (99%) de l’électorat de Knafo, et surperforme dans les clusters traditionnels de la droite et de l’extrême droite, comme les “conservateurs” (95%), “identitaires” et “autoritaires” (97%). Mais ce pourrait être insuffisant pour conquérir la mairie. “Mécaniquement, elle ne peut pas gagner si elle n’a pas le centre avec elle”, souligne Dormagen, qui considère que “l’électorat de Bournazel est l’arbitre de l’élection”. A l’autre bout de l’échiquier politique, Sophia Chikirou conforte son résultat grâce à un électorat fidèle : près de 89% des Parisiens qui ont voté pour elle au premier tour récidiveraient au second. (*) Sondage Cluster 17 pour POLITICO réalisé par questionnaire autoadministré en ligne, entre le 17 et le 19 mars 2026, auprès de 1 616 personnes représentatives de la population de Paris âgée de 18 ans et plus, dont 1 437 inscrits sur les listes électorales. L’échantillon est réalisé selon la méthode des quotas (genre, âge, catégorie socioprofessionnelle). L’enquête a fait l’objet d’un redressement sociodémographique (données Insee) et d’un redressement politique sur la base du premier tour des municipales 2026. Pour 1 437 personnes, la marge d’erreur est comprise entre 1,6 et 2,6 points.

BRUSSELS — EU leaders were supposed to spend Thursday mapping out how to boost Europe’s economy. Instead, they were left scrambling to deal with two wars, a deepening transatlantic rift and a standoff over Ukraine. Twelve hours of talks, a few showdowns and many, many coffees later, here’s POLITICO’s rapid round-up of what we learned at the European Council. 1) Viktor Orbán’s not a man for moving … The most pressing question ahead of this summit was whether Hungary’s prime minister could be convinced to drop his veto to the EU’s €90 billion loan for Ukraine. He wasn’t. The European Commission had attempted to appease Orbán in the days running up to the summit by sending a mission of experts to Ukraine to inspect the damaged Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. Orbán has argued that Ukraine is deliberately not addressing the issue, and tied that to his blocking of the cash. Asked whether he saw any chance for progress on the loan going into the summit, Orbán’s response was simple: “No.” Twelve hours later, that answer was much the same. 2) … But he does like to stretch his legs. In one of the most striking images to have come out of Thursday’s summit, the Hungarian prime minister stands on the sidelines of the outer circle of the room while the rest of the leaders are in their usual spots listening to a virtual address from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (on screen) speaks to EU leaders via video at the European Council summit in Brussels, March 19, 2026. | Pool photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert/OL / AFP via Getty Images The relationship between the two has descended into outright acrimony after the Hungarian leader refused to back the EU loan and the Ukrainian leader made veiled threats — which even drew the (rare) rebuke of the Commission. Faced with Zelenskyy’s address, the Hungarian decided to vote with his feet. 3) The new kid on the block is happy to be a part of this European family, dysfunctional as it may be. This was the first leaders’ summit for Rob Jetten, the Netherland’s newly-installed prime minister. Ahead of the meeting, he said he was “very much looking forward to being part of this family.” His verdict after the talks? That leaders differ greatly in their speaking style, with some quite efficient while others take longer to get to the point — but he welcomed the jokes of Belgian’s Bart De Wever, “especially when the meeting has been going on for hours.” 5) Though not everyone was so charitable. Broadly speaking, Orbán digging in his heels did not go down well. Sweden’s prime minister told reporters after the summit that leaders’ criticism of the Hungarian in the room was “very, very harsh,” and like nothing he’d ever heard at an EU summit. Jetten said the vibe in the room with EU leaders was “icy” at points, with “awkward silences.”  6) The EU’s not giving up on the loan. Despite murmurs ahead of the talks of a plan B in the works, multiple EU leaders as well as Costa and Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen were adamant that the loan was the only way to go — and that it will happen, eventually. “We will deliver one way or the other … Today, we have strengthened our resolve,” von der Leyen. Costa added: “Nobody can blackmail the European Council, no one can blackmail the European Union.” Top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas arrives at the European Council summit on March 19, 2026. | Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images 7) Kaja Kallas wants to avoid a messy entanglement. In her address to the bloc’s leaders, Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, stressed the importance of not getting caught up in the conflict in the Middle East. “Starting war is like a love affair — it’s easy to get in and difficult to get out,” she said, according to two diplomats briefed by leaders on the closed-door talks. At the same time, Kallas reiterated the importance of the EU’s defending its interests in the region but said there was little appetite for expanding the remit of its Aspides naval mission, currently operating in the Red Sea. 8) But it was all roses with the U.N. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres joined the Council for lunch, thanking them for their “strong support for multilateralism and international law.” In an an exclusive interview with POLITICO on the sidelines of the summit, Guterres applauded the restraint shown by the Europeans, despite Donald Trump’s anger at their refusal to actively support the war or help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime artery that Iran has largely sealed off, driving up global energy prices. 9) Kinda. One senior EU official told POLITICO that the lunch meeting was “unnecessary.” “With all appreciation for multilateralism and its importance … considering the role the U.N. is not playing in international crises right now, it is unnecessary,” said the official, granted anonymity to speak freely. 10) Celery is a very versatile vegetable. Also on the table while they picked over the future of the multilateral world order was a pâté en croûte with spring vegetables and fillet of veal with celery three ways. Three ways! And for dessert? A mandarin tartlet with cinnamon. 11) Cyprus and Greece want the EU to get serious about mutual defense. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis asked the EU to think about a roadmap for acting on the bloc’s mutual defense clause, according to two EU diplomats and one senior European government official. The clause, Article 42.7, is the EU’s equivalent of NATO’s Article 5. Its existence and potential use has recently come into focus since British bases in Cyprus were attacked by drones. 12) And the Commission hopes it’s already got serious enough about migration. Von der Leyen said that while the EU has not yet experienced an increase in migrants as a result of the conflict in Iran, the bloc should be prepared. “There is absolutely no appetite … to repeat the situation of 2015 in the event of large migration flows resulting from the conflict in the Middle East,” said one national official. The Commission chief emphasized that the mistakes of the 2015 refugee crisis won’t happen again. 13) Von der Leyen likes to cross her Ts.   Speaking of emphasis — “temporary, tailored and targeted” was how von der Leyen described the EU’s short-term actions to minimize the impact on Europe of the recent energy price spikes after the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. The moves will impact four components that affect energy prices: energy costs, grid charges, taxes and levies and carbon pricing, she said. 14) The ETS is here to stay — with some modifications. While EU leaders agreed to make some adjustments to the Emissions Trading System — the bloc’s carbon market — most forcefully backed the continuation of the system itself. “This ETS is a great success. It has been in place for 20 years and is a market-based and technology-neutral system. So we are not calling the ETS into question,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters after the talks had concluded. While the Commission will propose some adjustments to the ETS by July, these are merely adjustments, not fundamental changes, the German leader said. In the run-up to the summit, some EU countries, including Italy, floated the idea of weakening the ETS to help weather soaring energy prices. 15) No matter what, EU leaders want to get home — ASAP. While Costa has so far ensured every European Council under his watch lasts only one day instead of the once-customary two, this time around, that goal was looking optimistic. However, at the end of the day, leaders’ dogged determination to get out of there prevailed (even if that meant kicking a discussion on the long-term budget to April). À bientôt!

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos arrives in Brussels on Tuesday with a clear message for EU regulators ahead of a looming review of Europe’s streaming rules: Don’t overcomplicate them. In an exclusive interview with POLITICO, Sarandos said Netflix can live with regulation — but warned the EU not to fracture the single market with a patchwork of national mandates as officials prepare to reopen the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. “It doesn’t make it a very healthy business environment if you don’t know if the rules are going to change midway through production,” Sarandos said. He also warned regulators are underestimating YouTube as a direct competitor for TV viewing, too often treating it like a social media platform with “a bunch of cat videos” than a massive streaming rival. Sarandos’ effort to win over European regulators comes soon after the collapse of Netflix’s bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — but Sarandos maintained that the political dynamics around the deal only “complicated the narrative, not the actual outcomes.” He added that there was no political interference in the deal, and he shrugged off President Donald Trump’s demand to remove Susan Rice, a former national security adviser under President Barack Obama, from the Netflix board. “It was a social media post,” Sarandos said. “It was not ideal, but he does a lot of things on social media.” This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. What’s bringing you back to Brussels now? Well, we have ongoing meetings with regulators around Europe all the time. We have so much business in Europe, obviously, and so this has been on the books for quite a while. Can you give me a little bit of a sense of who you’re meeting with, and what is the focus? I think one of the things to keep in mind is that we’ve become such an important part, I’d think, of the European audiovisual economy. We’ve spent, in the last decade, over $13 billion in creating content in Europe. It makes us one of the leading producers and exporters of European storytelling. First of all, we’ve got a lot of skin in the game in Europe, obviously. We work with over 600 independent European producers. We created about 100,000 cast and crew jobs in Europe from our productions. So we talk to folks who are interested in all the elements of that — how to keep it, how to maintain it, how to grow it and how to protect it. In terms of regulation in the EU, Netflix is governed by a directive here. The commission is looking to reopen that this year. There seems to be a sense here from regulators that the current rules don’t create a level playing field between the broadcasters, the video on demand, the video sharing, and so they may look to put more requirements on that. How steeped in the details are you there? And how would Netflix react to more rules put on Netflix at this moment? Well, first and foremost, we comply with all the rules that apply to us in terms of how we’re regulated today. We have seen by operating around the world that those countries where they lean more into incentives than the strict regulatory scheme, that the incentives pay off. We’ve got multibillion dollar investments in Spain and the UK, where they have really leaned into attracting production through incentives versus regulatory mandates, so we find that that’s a much more productive environment to work in. But the core for me is that obviously they’re going to evolve the regulatory models, but as long as they remain simple, predictable, consistent — the single market, the benefit of the single-market is this — as long as these rules remain simple, predictable and consistent, it’s a good operating model. I think the more that it gets broken up by individual countries and individual mandates, you lose all the benefits of the single market. There’s a lot of talk in Brussels right now about simplification, getting rid of a lot of red tape. Do you think the rules that you’re governed by would benefit from a similar kind of effort to simplify, of pulling back on a lot of these patchwork of rules, even at the EU? Look, I think it doesn’t make it a very healthy business environment if you don’t know if the rules are going to change midway through production, so for me, having some stability is really important, and I understand that we’re in a dynamic market and a dynamic business, and they should reflect the current operating models that we’re in too. We want to work closely with the regulators to make sure that what they’re doing and what we’re doing kind of reflect each other, which is trying to protect the healthy work environment for folks in Europe. When you meet with regulators here, is there a message you’re going to be delivering to them or what do you want them to walk away with in terms of the bottom line for you in terms of your business at this moment in the EU? I think some things are well understood and other things I think are less so. I think our commitment to European production is unique in the world. Both in our original production but also in our investment in second right’s windows that we pre-invest in films that compel production. Tens of millions of dollars’ worth of film production is compelled by our licensing agreements as well beyond our original production. And the fact that we work with local European producers on these projects — I think there’s a misconception that we don’t. And the larger one is the economic impact that that brings to Europe and to the world with our original program strategy that supports so many, not just the productions themselves but even tourism in European countries. Think about President [Emmanuel] Macron pointing out that 38 percent of people who went to France last year cited “Emily in Paris” as one of the top reasons they went. We’ve seen that in other countries. We saw it in Madrid with the “Casa de Papel.” And so it’s one of those things where it really raises all boats across the economies of these countries. Regulators often focus on the competition between streaming services, but as you know very well, younger audiences are spending more time on platforms like YouTube. Do you think policymakers are underestimating that shift? Would you like to see that taken into account more in the regulatory landscape? One of the things that we saw in recent months with the Warner Brothers transaction is a real deep misunderstanding about what YouTube is and isn’t. YouTube is a straightforward direct competitor for television, either a local broadcaster or a streamer like Netflix. The connected television market is a zero-sum screen. So whichever one you choose, that’s what you’re watching tonight. And you monetize through subscription or advertising or both, but at the end of the day, it’s that choosing to engage in how you give them and how, and how that programming is monetized is a very competitive landscape and it includes YouTube. I think what happens is people think of YouTube as a bunch of cat videos and maybe some way to, to promote your stuff by putting it on there for free. But it turns out it is a zero-sum game. You’re going to be choosing at the expense of an RTL or Netflix. I think in this case it’s one of these things where recognizing and understanding that YouTube is in the same exact game that we are. Do you feel like you’re on different planes though, in the eyes of regulators at this moment? I don’t think that they see them as a direct competitor in that way. I think they think of that as an extension of social media. And the truth is when we talk about them as a competitor, we’re only talking about them on the screen. I’m not talking about their mobile usage or any of that. You know, about 55 percent of all YouTube engagement now is on the television through their app. So to me, that’s the thing to keep an eye on. As you get into this, it’s a pretty straightforward, competitive model and we think probably should have a level playing field relative to everybody else. Who do you view as Netflix’s main competitors today? Look, our competitive space is really the television screen. When people pick up the remote and pick what to watch, everyone is in that mix. We identified YouTube — this isn’t new for us — we identified YouTube as a competitor in the space 10 years ago, even before they moved to the television. And I think, for the most part, TikTok forced their hand to move to the television because they were kind of getting chased off the phone more or less by TikTok. I think that’s the other one that regulators should pay a lot of attention to is what’s happening with the rise of TikTok engagement as well. It’s not directly competitive for us, but it is for attention and time and to your point, maybe the next generation’s consumer behavior. Last question on regulation: With the EU looking at the rules again, there’s a tendency always to look to tinker more and more and do more. Is there a point at what regulation starts affecting your willingness to invest in European production? Well, like I said, those core principles of predictability and simplicity have really got to come into play, because I think what happens is, just like any business, you have to be able to plan. So, if you make a production under one set of regs and release it under another, it’s not a very stable business environment. The topic that dominated a lot of your attention in recent months was obviously the merger talks with Warner Brothers Discovery. I know you’ve said it didn’t work for financial reasons. I want to ask you a little bit about the political dynamics. How much did the political environment, including the Susan Rice incident, how much did that complicate the calculus in your mind? I think it complicated the narrative, not the actual outcomes. I think for us it was always a business transaction, was always a well-regulated process in the U.S. The Department of Justice was handling it, everything was moving through. We were very confident we did not have a regulatory issue. Why would that be? It’s because it was very much a vertical transaction. I can’t name a transaction that was similar to this that has ever been blocked in history. We did not have duplicated assets. We did have a market concentration issue in the marketplace that we operate in. And I think that’s the feedback I was getting back from the DOJ and from regulators in general, which was, they understood that, but I do think that Paramount did a very nice job of creating a very loud narrative of a regulatory challenge that didn’t exist. But looking back to those early days of the merger discussions, did you have an appreciation for what might follow in terms of that complicated narrative? Yeah. Look, I think it opens up the door to have a lot of conversations that you wouldn’t have had otherwise, but that’s okay. A lot great things came out of it, the process itself. I would say in total, we had a price for where we thought this was good for our business. We made our best and final offer back in December and it was our best and final offer. So that’s all. But what came out a bit that’s positive is, we’ve had really healthy conversations with folks who we hardly ever talked to, theater operators, as a good example. I had a great meeting in February with the International Union of Cinemas, and the heads from all the different countries about what challenges they have, how we could be more helpful, or how they could be helpful to us too. I think we’ll come out of this with a much more creative relationship with exhibitions around the world. And by way of example, doing things that we haven’t done before. I don’t recommend testifying before the Senate again, but it was an interesting experience for sure. Probably a good learning experience. Hopefully not in the future for anything that you don’t want to be there for, but yes. Yeah, exactly. We’ve always said from the beginning, the Warner transaction was a nice-to-have at the right price, not a must-have-at-any-price. The business is healthy, growing organically. We’re growing on the path that we laid out several years ago and we didn’t really need this to grow the business. These assets are out there through our growth period and they’re going to be out there and for our next cycle growth as well and we’ve got to compete with that just like we knew we had to at the beginning. This was I think something that would fortify and maybe accelerate some of our existing models, but it doesn’t change our outcome. Are there regrets or things you might have wished you’d done differently? I mean honestly we took a very disciplined approach. I think we intentionally did not get distracted by the narrative noise, because we knew, we recognized what it was right away, which is just narrative noise. This deal was very good for the industry. Very good for both companies, Warner Brothers and Netflix. Our intent was obviously to keep those businesses operating largely as they are now. All the synergies that we had in the deal were mostly technologies and managerial, so we would have kept a big growth engine going in Hollywood and around the world. The alternative, which we’ve always said, is a lot of cutting. I think regulators in Europe and regulators in the U.S. should keep an eye on horizontal mergers. They should keep a close eye on [leveraged buyouts]. They typically are not good for the economy anywhere they happen. What were you preparing for in terms of the EU regulatory scrutiny with Warner Brothers? What was your read on how that might have looked? I think we’re a known entity in Europe. Keep in mind, like in Q4 of last year, we reported $3.5 billion or $3.8 billion in European revenues. So 18 percent year-on-year growth. The EU is now our largest territory. We’re a known entity there. The reason we didn’t take out press releases, we had meetings in Europe as we know everybody. We talked to the regulators, both at the EU and at the country level. And I do think that in many of the countries that we operate in, we’re a net contributor to the local economy, which I think is really important. We’ve got 12 offices across Europe with 2,500 people. So we’re members of the local ecosystem, we’re not outsiders. With President Trump, he demanded that Netflix remove Susan Rice from the board or pay the consequences. Did that cross a line for you in terms of political interference? It was a social media post, and we didn’t, no, it did not. It was not ideal, but he does a lot of things on social media. So you didn’t interpret it as anything bigger than that. I mean, he does that one day, he could obviously weigh in on content the next day. How does somebody like you manage situations like that? I think it’s really important to be able to separate noise from signal, and I think a lot of what happens in a world where we have a lot of noise. There was so much attention to you going to the White House that day. And we didn’t learn until several days later that you didn’t actually have the meetings that were predicted. Before you arrived in Washington that day, had you already made the decision not to proceed? Not before arriving in Washington, but we knew the framework for if this, then that. So, yeah, I would say that it was interesting, but again, we don’t make a big parade about our meetings with government and with the regulators. I had a meeting on the books with the DOJ scheduled several weeks before, meeting with Susie Wiles, the president’s chief of staff, scheduled several months before, unrelated to the Warner Brothers deal. And that was just the calendar that lined up that way. We didn’t know when Warner Brothers would make the statement about the deal. It’s all very dramatic, like it belongs on Netflix as a movie. There was paparazzi outside of the White House waiting for me when I came out. I’ve never experienced that before. Yeah, it’s a remarkable story. I would tell you, and I’m being honest with you, there was no political interference in this deal. The president is interested in entertainment and interested in deals, so he was curious about the mechanics of things and how things were going to go or whatever, but he made it very clear that this was under the DOJ. So it’s just like we all spun it up from the media? How do you explain it all? First of all, Netflix is clickbait. So people write about Netflix and it gets read. And that’s a pretty juicy story. And [Trump] said, and by the way, like I said, he makes statements sometimes that lead to the beliefs of things that do and sometimes that don’t materialize at all. But I found my conversations with him were 100 percent about the industry, protecting the industry. And I think it’s very healthy that the president of the United States speaks to business leaders about industries that are important to the economy. To what degree did the narrative or the fact that David Ellison had a relationship or seemed to have a relationship with people in Washington who were in power, that that might have swayed or changed the dynamic at the end with where Warner Brothers went though? I can’t speak to what their thinking is on it. I feel like for me, it’s very important to know the folks in charge, but I wouldn’t count on it if you’re doing something that is not in the best interest of the country or the economy. You talked with Trump in the past about entertainment jobs. Were there specific policies you’ve advocated to him or anything that he brought up on that point? He has brought up tariffs for the movie and television industry many times. And I’ve hopefully talked to him the way out of them. I just said basically the same thing I said earlier. I think that incentive works much better. We’re seeing it in the U.S. things like the states compete with each other for production incentives and those states with good, healthy incentive programs attract a lot of production, and you’ve seen a lot of them move from California to Georgia to New Jersey, kind of looking for that what’s the best place to operate in, where you could put more on the screen. And I do think that having the incentives versus tariffs is much better. Netflix is now buying Ben Affleck’s AI company. What areas do you see AI having the most potential to change Netflix’s workflow? My focus is that AI should be a creator tool. But with the same way production tools have evolved over time, AI is just a rapid, important evolution of these tools. It is one of those. And the idea that the creators could use it to do things that they could never do before to do it. Potentially, they could do faster and cheaper. But the most impact will be if they can make it better. I don’t think faster and cheaper matters if it’s not better. This is the most competitive time in the history of media. So you’ve gotta be better every time out of the gate. And faster and cheaper consumers are not looking for faster and cheaper, they’re looking for better. I do think that AI, particularly InterPositive, the company we bought from Ben, will help creators make things better. Using their own dailies, using their own production materials to make the film that they’re making better. Still requires writers and actors and lighting techs and all the things that you’d use to make a movie, but be able to make the movie more effective, more efficient. Being able to do pick up shots and things like this that you couldn’t do before. It’s really remarkable. It’s a really remarkable company. As AI improves, do you see the role of human voice actors shrinking at Netflix? What’s interesting about that is if you look at the evolution of tools for dubbing and subtitling, the one for dubbing, we do a lot of A-B tests that people, if you watch something and you don’t like it, you just turn it off. The one thing that we find to be the most important part of dubbing is the performance. So good voice actors really matter. Yeah, it’s a lot cheaper to use AI, but without the performance, which is very human, it actually runs down the quality of the production. Will it evolve over time? Possibly, but it won’t evolve without the cooperation and the training of the actual voice actors themselves too. I think what will happen is you’ll be able to do things like pick up lines that you do months and months after the production. You’ll be able to recreate some of those lines in the film without having to call everybody back and redo everything which will help make a better film. You’re in the sort of early stages of a push into video podcast. What have you learned so far about what works and what doesn’t? It’s really early. The main thing is we’ve got a broad cross-section of podcasts. It’s nowhere near as complete as other podcast outlets yet. But the things that we leaned into are the things that are working. We kind of figured they would. You’ve got true crime, sports, comedy, all those things that we do well in the doc space already. And I really am excited about things where people can develop and deepen the relationship with the show itself or the [intellectual property] itself. Our Bridgerton podcast is really popular, and people really want to go deeper and we want to be able to provide that for them. I think a video podcast is just the evolution of talk shows. We have tried to and failed at many talk shows over the years, and for the most part it’s because the old days of TV, when 40 million people used to tune in to the Tonight Show every night, [are over]. What’s happened now is that it’s much smaller audiences that tune into multiple shows in the form of a podcast every day. And then they come up to be way bigger than the 40 million that Johnny Carson used to get. They’re all individual, and it’s a deeper relationship than it is a broad one. So instead of trying to make one show for the world, you might have to make hundreds or thousands of shows for the whole world.

Pas de suspense en vue à Perpignan, ou presque, tant la réélection de Louis Aliot semble le scénario le plus probable, les 15 et 22 mars prochains. Le maire Rassemblement national sortant est crédité de 46% des intentions de vote au premier tour des municipales dans le sondage Cluster 17* dévoilé en exclusivité par POLITICO jeudi. “Il n’est pas loin d’une possible réélection dès le premier tour” qui se tiendra dimanche, constate Jean-Yves Dormagen, président de l’institut. Les oppositions sont loin derrière. La gauche est divisée : pas moins de trois listes se présentent devant les électeurs. La candidate PS-Place publique Agnès Langevine est créditée d’un score de 15%, tout comme son concurrent Insoumis, Mickaël Idrac. Juste derrière eux, à 14% des intentions de vote, on trouve la liste d’union de la droite et du centre menée par Bruno Nougayrède. Parti en dissidence contre l’avis du PS local (mais avec le soutien notamment du Parti communiste et du Parti radical de gauche), Mathias Blanc obtiendrait 9% des suffrages et serait dans l’impossibilité de se maintenir au second tour. La liste de Pascale Advenard (Lutte ouvrière) est créditée de 1%. “L’ESPACE MACRONISTE EST EN VOIE DE DISPARITION” Si Louis Aliot est si haut dans les estimations, c’est bien sûr parce qu’il est “très fort” à droite et à l’extrême droite, un électorat majoritaire dans cette ville, note Jean-Yves Dormagen. L’étude des clusters, ou catégories de population, (la méthodologie de l’institut) le montre bien : le maire sortant convainc 91% des “conservateurs”, “antiassistanat” et “traditionnalistes”, 92% des “réfractaires” et “sociaux-patriotes” et 87% des “identitaires” et “autoritaires”. “Il fait presque totalement le plein dans l’électorat RN et Reconquête”, ajoute le sondeur. La condamnation de Louis Aliot à une peine d’inéligibilité de trois ans en première instance dans l’affaire des assistants parlementaires du Front national — il a fait appel et prévoit de se pourvoir en cassation si la peine était confirmée le 7 juillet prochain — n’a donc manifestement pas atteint sa cote de popularité, malgré les tentatives de ses opposants d’en faire un sujet de la campagne. En face, les oppositions de gauche pâtissent de leurs divisions. “Même en faisant la somme des trois listes, leur camp n’a quasiment aucune chance de gagner et en étant aussi divisé, cela renforce cette perception”, pointe le président de Cluster 17. A l’entendre, le maire sortant sait parfaitement jouer avec cette fragmentation : son avance est telle qu’il y a “un petit côté démobilisateur”, ajoute Jean-Yves Dormagen. Dernier point notable : l’effondrement de la droite et du centre. Alors que le candidat Bruno Nougayrède bénéficie du soutien de tous les partis de droite et du centre, il n’est donné qu’à 14% des intentions de vote, coincé entre la gauche et le RN. “A Perpignan, l’espace macroniste est en voie de disparition”, observe Dormagen, qui rappelle que cette tendance n’est pas nouvelle. En 2024, lors des élections européennes, la liste Renaissance de Valérie Hayer n’avait obtenu que 10,98% des voix, celle du LR François-Xavier Bellamy, 4,61%. (*) Etude réalisée par Cluster 17, du 8 au 11 mars 2026, via des questionnaires autoadministrés en ligne, auprès d’un échantillon de 617 personnes, représentatif, grâce à la méthode des quotas, de la population de Perpignan, âgée de 18 ans et plus, dont 521 personnes inscrites sur les listes électorales. L’enquête a fait l’objet d’un redressement sociodémographique (données Insee) et d’un redressement politique sur la base de la reconstitution des votes suivants : premier tour de la présidentielle 2022, premier tour des municipales 2020 et européennes de 2024. La marge d’erreur pour 521 personnes est comprise entre 1,9 et 4,5 points.

PARIS — En France, près de deux tiers des policiers municipaux sont équipés d’une arme à feu, selon des chiffres obtenus auprès du ministère de l’Intérieur par POLITICO, soit 17 800 sur les 28 400 agents en activité en 2024. Cinq ans plus tôt, ils étaient 13 700 à être équipés. A quelques jours des élections municipales, l’armement létal de ces policiers figure dans de nombreux programmes. Dans les principaux partis, seule La France insoumise milite clairement pour leur désarmement. Le parti conteste le désengagement de l’Etat de son rôle régalien et appelle plutôt à un renforcement de la police nationale et de la gendarmerie. Modernisée en 1999, la police municipale, placée sous l’autorité du maire, s’est développée par palier, surtout en milieu urbain. Et la tendance est à la hausse, avec des édiles toujours tentés de recruter. DES VARIATIONS SELON LES DÉPARTEMENTS Sur l’ensemble du territoire, la proportion de policiers municipaux disposant d’au moins une arme s’élève à 80%, qu’il s’agisse d’armes de poing, de pistolets à impulsion électrique, de flash-balls ou d’armes de catégorie inférieure (bombe lacrymogène, matraque), moins dangereuses. Mais des disparités existent. Pour des raisons de sécurité, le ministère de l’Intérieur ne partage pas de données par commune, mais seulement des agrégats par département. Dans les départements du pourtour méditerranéen, près de 100% des policiers municipaux sont ainsi armés. Longtemps, Nice a d’ailleurs été la ville avec la plus grosse police municipale, avant d’être détrônée il y a quelques années par Paris. La capitale comptait 1750 agents en 2024, selon un autre fichier publié par le ministère de l’Intérieur après une demande de POLITICO. Installée par Anne Hidalgo, la police municipale parisienne n’est armée que de bombes lacrymogènes et de matraques. Les candidats de droite et d’extrême droite, de Pierre-Yves Bournazel à Sarah Knafo en passant par Rachida Dati, souhaiteraient l’équiper d’armes létales et gonfler encore ses rangs. Restant opposé aux armes à feu, le socialiste Emmanuel Grégoire s’est dit prêt à “un référendum”, si les missions de la police municipale étaient étendues. A Bordeaux, 10e ville du classement avec 177 agents, la police municipale a longtemps été non armée. L’année dernière, le maire écologiste a finalement décidé de doter une soixantaine de policiers municipaux d’armes de poing. Dans l’Ouest, très peu de policiers sont armés. Brest est la seule ville de plus de 100 000 habitants sans police municipale. Cela pourrait changer : tous les principaux candidats, dont le maire socialiste sortant et hormis celle de La France insoumise, se sont exprimés en sa faveur de sa création. Son armement fait néanmoins débat. UN ARMEMENT PAR ÉTAPE, UNE LOI POUR DEMAIN Il revient au maire de décider de quel armement dispose sa police. Si toutes les polices ne sont pas équipées d’armes à feu, l’armement létal est aussi devenu un argument mis en avant par les collectivités pour embaucher des agents. Dans la foulée des attentats de 2015, qui ont notamment coûté la vie à Clarissa Jean-Philippe, agente à Montrouge, le ministre de l’Intérieur Bernard Cazeneuve avait prêté des pistolets de l’Etat, développant fortement l’armement des polices locales. Entre 2021 et 2024, le nombre de policiers municipaux ayant des armes a feu a ainsi augmenté de 50%, quand leur effectif global n’a crû que de 11%. Toute la panoplie a également fait un bond : le recours aux pistolets à impulsion électrique (les Tasers, principalement) et aux lanceurs de balles de défense type flash-balls ont aussi augmenté de respectivement 47% et 70% entre 2021 et 2024. Le gouvernement souhaite étendre à nouveau les pouvoirs des polices municipales et des gardes champêtres via un projet de loi, déjà adopté par le Sénat par l’ensemble des groupes à l’exception des communistes et des écologistes. Le texte est programmé pour avril à l’Assemblée nationale. Il prévoit notamment de faciliter la formation au port d’arme des agents et de leur permettre d’utiliser des drones et des lecteurs automatiques de plaque d’immatriculation pour verbaliser. Les sénateurs y ont ajouté la création d’une autorisation nationale de port d’arme, qui permettrait à un agent de conserver son droit même en cas de mutation.

PARIS — Le débat sur FranceInfo entre la plupart des têtes de liste aux municipales à Paris, qui a eu lieu mercredi soir, devrait être le seul et unique moment d’échange télévisuel entre les candidats avant le premier tour. LCI, BFMTV et CNews ont annulé leurs propres débats, a appris POLITICO auprès des équipes de deux candidats. La raison : la décision de Rachida Dati (LR) de ne participer à aucun débat avant l’entre-deux-tours. Un choix politiquement assumé, mais qui complique la vie des chaînes d’information, soumises au respect des règles de temps de parole fixées par l’Arcom. En l’absence de sa principale rivale, Emmanuel Grégoire (PS) rechignait lui aussi à participer à ces émissions. Sur FranceInfo mercredi, l’ex-ministre de la Culture s’était fait représenter par l’un de ses colistiers, Grégory Canal. En conséquence, son adversaire socialiste avait aussi fait le choix de sécher l’émission et d’envoyer une de ses colistières, Lamia El Aaraje. Pour assurer une couverture à l’antenne malgré tout, les chaînes réfléchissent en urgence à d’autres formats. Sur LCI, les candidats pourraient être interviewés par Darius Rochebin, à tour de rôle, la semaine du 9 mars. BFMTV envisage aussi une série d’interviews.

PARIS — La vacance à la tête de Business France vit enfin à son épilogue. Le conseil d’administration de l’agence chargée de l’internationalisation de l’économie française a approuvé mardi, à l’unanimité, l’arrivée prochaine de Louis Margueritte au poste de directeur général, a appris POLITICO. Cet avis favorable, confirmé par deux sources internes, constitue la dernière étape avant l’officialisation de sa nomination par décret dans les prochains jours. Choisi par l’exécutif, comme l’a révélé POLITICO, l’ex-député Renaissance devenu directeur de cabinet adjoint à Matignon avait été retenu à l’issue d’un processus de recrutement long de dix-sept mois, émaillé de rebondissements. La Haute Autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique (HATVP) avait ainsi mis son grain de sel dans le processus afin d’éviter de possibles conflits d’intérêts. Une première fois en opposant son veto à la désignation de la conseillère élyséenne Victoire Vandeville, puis en mettant des bâtons dans les roues de l’ex-ministre Laurent Saint-Martin, lui-même patron de Business France entre 2023 et 2024, qui avait envisagé d’y faire son retour. La question se posait donc de savoir si Louis Margueritte, en charge notamment des sujets budgétaires et de simplification auprès de François Bayrou puis de Sébastien Lecornu, avait pu connaître de dossiers relatifs à Business France — comme les crédits de l’agence, en baisse, ou les réflexions gouvernementales sur un éventuel rapprochement avec Atout France. L’intéressé a assuré s’être strictement déporté de ces sujets.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission wants to cut almost a year off the time it takes to approve trade deals by giving the English version of agreements a head start, allowing political approval to move ahead before translations into the EU’s two dozen languages are finalized.  The EU is under pressure to raise its trade game as the U.S. and China close faster deals, and President Donald Trump wields tariffs to exert geopolitical leverage. But, as the bloc acts to diversify its trading relationships, the process of checking and translating deals can hold up its own agreements for as long as two years. The EU executive outlined a draft plan to capitals earlier this month that would telescope the time for agreements to enter into force by streamlining their translation, according to an internal presentation seen by POLITICO.  A key element of the pitch for an “accelerated procedure” is completing the legal process with capitals and the European Parliament based only on the negotiated English-language version of a deal — instead of the translated texts in all 24 EU languages.  Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič is expected to present the idea when the bloc’s trade ministers meet in Cyprus this Friday.  The lengthy internal process that runs from the conclusion of trade talks until the deal enters into force routinely takes about 23 months. The Commission wants to slash that to 13 months, under a tentative timeline included in the presentation.  That’s a step in the right direction — but not nearly ambitious enough, according to exporters in Germany, Europe’s largest economy. “Reducing the negotiation period from 23 to 13 months is progress, but it is not enough. If Europe truly wants to reduce dependencies and diversify its trading partners, political decisions, legal reviews, and translations must be significantly faster,” said Dirk Jandura, president of the Federation of German Wholesale, Foreign Trade and Services (BGA). “Economic reality is measured in months — not years,” said Jandura.  FRONTLOADED SCRUBBING Legal “scrubbing” — a time-consuming process that ensures both parties agree on the precise meaning of a text and not just the overall commitments — would be “partly frontloaded during negotiations” and take place in parallel with the Commission’s adoption of the text, as well its presentation to the Council. The streamlined procedure reflects an “urgent need to diversify our trade partners” and to reap “the benefits of our trade agreements without delay,” the Commission writes in its seven-page presentation, adding this would only be applied to trade agreements that fall under the exclusive competence of the EU.  The EU’s recent agreements with India and Indonesia would be test cases of this accelerated procedure. “It will be taken up on legal scrubbing on a fast-track basis as we discussed … and translated into 24 languages simultaneously. We do hope that we should be able to celebrate the entry into force of this agreement within calendar 2026,” Indian trade chief Piyush Goyal said after leaders sealed the EU-India trade deal last month.  Prior agreements with New Zealand and, most recently, the Latin American Mercosur bloc, had to be translated into all 24 EU languages before they could be formally signed. The plan, which is still in its early stages, could set up “linguistic difficulties” amongst EU countries, three EU diplomats said, for instance if some large countries insist they require a translation alongside the English one. Thorsten Mumme in Berlin contributed to this report. 

BRUSSELS — Ireland on Monday sounded the alarm over a new group of Europe’s largest six economies, dubbed “E6,” amid fears that smaller countries’ interests could be bulldozed. “I am conscious, and I say this very respectfully, a lot of the countries in that E6 will have different views on some fundamental issues,” Irish Finance Minister Simon Harris said ahead of a meeting with his eurozone peers in Brussels. “I would much rather see a structure where countries come together on issues where they share a common view rather than the entry to the club being based on your size exclusively,” he said. Harris’ comments came after the finance ministers of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland met in Brussels, behind closed doors, earlier in the day to discuss how best to speed up Europe’s plans to take on Wall Street. That’s a problem for the likes of Dublin, which has a direct stake in the plans to deepen the bloc’s financial markets. Most money managers in Europe do the bulk of their business in Ireland and Luxembourg, which oppose efforts to create a single EU watchdog for the biggest financiers across the bloc. Monday’s E6 gathering was the second meeting of its kind, with another planned in March, amid growing frustration that the EU is moving too slowly to keep pace with the economic powerhouses of the U.S. and China. The shock surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump’s pursuit of Greenland also convinced the EU’s most powerful countries to agree on political positions ahead of G7 meetings — especially when it comes to securing critical raw materials. “What happened with Greenland served as a wake-up call,” Germany’s finance minister, Lars Klingbeil, told reporters ahead of the Eurogroup. “We’ll be transparent.” The goal is to agree on certain topics and present them to the rest of the EU, he added. The next E6 meeting will focus on boosting the euro on the global stage and making defense investments more effective. Not everyone’s opposed. Some diplomats perceive E6 as little more than a political tactic to push the most reluctant countries to go ahead on controversial issues. TWO-SPEED EUROPE While there are other formats that smaller countries can attend to influence policy, the E6 club is designed to coordinate policy positions on economic initiatives. That’s put several countries on edge. Political appetite for a two-speed Europe has been building, in which smaller groups of nations can peel off and sign up to initiatives that are mired in European discord. Several countries have expressed concern over the E6 club since its creation. Handling political debates within such an exclusive forum could also dilute the Eurogroup, which in itself is an informal body that finance ministers have used to discuss sensitive topics away from the public eye. “That’s going to kill the Eurogroup,” one EU diplomat said. “I think it’s a big mistake.” Kathryn Carlson contributed to this report.