A study commissioned by the European Parliament and published on August 12, 2026 is calling for strict, legally binding rules requiring illegal live sports streams to be blocked across the EU within 30 minutes of a rights holder’s complaint, and VPN providers are explicitly named as one of the intermediaries that would be forced to comply.
What the study actually proposes
According to reporting from TechRadar, the study was authored by Professor Giovanni Maria Riccio at the request of the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI). Rather than relying on the EU’s current voluntary anti-piracy guidelines, which the report argues are “fragmented and not fully adapted to the speed and technical complexity of live broadcasts,” it proposes mandatory, real-time blocking.
If adopted, network infrastructure providers, including ISPs, CDNs, VPNs, and DNS resolvers, would be subject to dynamic blocking orders requiring them to disrupt access to a specific illegal stream within a maximum 30-minute window from the moment a rights holder files a complaint. The model closely mirrors Italy’s Piracy Shield system, which already operates on a similarly rapid blocking timeline domestically.
Why VPNs specifically are named
The proposal echoes a position the Motion Picture Association (MPA) has previously pushed: that VPN providers should take a more active role in policing pirated content rather than remaining a neutral pass-through technology. If this study’s recommendations become binding law, VPN providers could be legally required to actively prevent users from using their service to circumvent active blocking orders, a materially different obligation than what most VPN providers currently operate under.
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The collateral damage problem
The report itself acknowledges the risk it’s creating. Real-time blocking at this speed relies heavily on IP and DNS-based filtering, both of which are imprecise tools: a single IP address frequently hosts hundreds of unrelated, entirely legitimate websites alongside whatever illegal stream triggered the block. Blocking that IP to stop the stream risks taking every other site sharing it offline too.
This isn’t theoretical. In Spain, an aggressive anti-piracy campaign led by La Liga resulted in over 500,000 domains being wrongly blocked, a level of collateral damage severe enough that a European ISP group formally demanded rightsholders be held liable for the fallout from their own blocking requests. The study’s own author acknowledges this risk and recommends that any blocking orders be narrowly tailored, limited strictly to the duration of the live event in question and subject to judicial or administrative oversight, rather than left open-ended.
Where this sits in the broader EU regulatory picture
This study lands alongside a series of other EU-level moves affecting VPNs and online privacy this year, including ongoing debate around EU data retention requirements for VPN providers and the long-running Chat Control proposal. Despite that pressure, VPN providers have also notched real legal wins in 2026: a ruling affirming VPNs as lawful technical tools, and NordVPN successfully fighting off piracy-related fines in Spain tied to the La Liga blocking campaign. Those precedents matter here, since any binding EU rule requiring VPNs to actively police circumvention would sit in real tension with the “VPNs are lawful, neutral tools” position that’s held up in court so far.
It’s also worth being precise about where the underlying piracy problem actually comes from. The report itself makes this point: when legal access to sports is fragmented across multiple, costly, geo-restricted subscriptions, many viewers turn to illegal streams simply because legitimate options are unaffordable or inaccessible where they live. The report explicitly warns that blocking measures, however fast, risk being blunt instruments unless paired with improvements in the affordability and cross-border availability of legal alternatives, a structural point that a 30-minute takedown deadline alone does nothing to fix.
What happens next
This remains a study, not law. The European Commission is separately and actively reviewing copyright directives affecting the digital single market, and studies like this one are typically an input into that broader legislative process rather than something with direct legal force on their own. But the European Parliament commissioned it specifically, through its Legal Affairs Committee, and its recommendations mirror a policy direction, Italy’s Piracy Shield model, that’s already operating domestically in one member state. That combination is why the VPN industry is treating this as a genuine early warning sign rather than background noise.
The MPA connection and industry pressure
The study’s framing of VPNs as intermediaries with an active enforcement role rather than neutral infrastructure lines up closely with a position the Motion Picture Association has pushed for several years, in the EU and elsewhere, as part of a broader industry effort to expand who bears responsibility for stopping piracy beyond just the operators of illegal streaming sites themselves. That alignment doesn’t mean the MPA authored or directly influenced this specific study, but it does mean the recommendations land in a policy environment where a receptive audience for exactly this kind of proposal already exists among major rights holders, which is part of why the VPN industry is watching the study’s reception closely rather than dismissing it as an academic exercise likely to go nowhere.
The Italian precedent this proposal is modeled on
Italy’s Piracy Shield system, already operating domestically, gives a concrete preview of how a 30-minute EU-wide rule might function in practice. Since its rollout, Piracy Shield has drawn sustained criticism from digital rights groups and infrastructure providers over exactly the collateral blocking risk described above, along with concerns about the speed of the process leaving little room for a blocked party to contest a takedown before it’s already in effect. Proponents point to real reductions in live-match piracy as the system’s justification. The EU study’s own acknowledgment of over-blocking risk suggests its authors are aware of Piracy Shield’s rockier moments and are trying to design safeguards around them, judicial or administrative oversight, event-duration limits, rather than simply exporting the Italian model unchanged.
Whether those safeguards hold up in practice, if this study’s recommendations do eventually become binding EU law, is precisely the open question the collateral damage numbers out of Spain make impossible to dismiss.
What this means for VPN users right now
Nothing changes immediately for VPN users today. This is a policy study, not an enacted regulation, and any binding rule would need to move through the EU’s full legislative process before VPN providers faced actual new obligations. But it’s a useful marker of where EU-level pressure on VPN providers is heading, and it’s worth watching alongside the other EU regulatory threads already in motion this year.
A European Parliament study is not binding law, but this one signals real intent: mandatory 30-minute blocking that would pull VPN providers into active anti-piracy enforcement, with a well-documented collateral damage risk the report's own author acknowledges. Nothing changes for VPN users today, but this is worth tracking alongside the EU's other ongoing regulatory pressure on VPN providers this year.
Keep reading: French Court Orders VPNs to Block Football Streams and CJEU Rules VPNs Are Lawful Tools.