Held during NEM Zagreb 2025, the panel Creatives, It’s Not Hard Only in Your Country, hosted by CEETV's Yako Molhov, brought together producers, writers, executives and creatives working across CEE, Western Europe and the United States. The premise was simple: creatives everywhere feel pressure, but is it really harder in some countries than others, or are we all facing the same structural problems expressed in different local forms?

From the very first answers, it became clear that it would not be a polite exchange of market slogans, but a raw, sometimes uncomfortable reality check about what it actually means to create scripted content today.

Before opening the discussion, Molhov grounded the conversation in facts. Drawing on freshly released data from the European Audiovisual Observatory, he outlined the broader industrial context in which all creatives are now operating. After the historic ‘peak TV’ moment of 2022, European scripted production has clearly slowed. Commissioned fiction volumes have dropped by nearly 10%, and global streamers ordered 24 fewer European titles last year alone (compared to 2022). While that number may not sound dramatic at first glance, its financial and psychological impact on development pipelines has been profound.

At the same time, Europe remains structurally different from the rest of the world. Public broadcasters continue to be the backbone of scripted production, with the BBC emerging as the single largest commissioner of European fiction, ahead of Netflix, Amazon and other global players. Public service media still account for the majority of new European titles, offering freely accessible local content and providing a stabilizing counterweight to the volatility of the global streaming economy. That model, he argued, remains one of Europe’s greatest strengths.

Against that backdrop, the discussion turned to the lived experience of creatives working inside this shifting ecosystem. The first question was intentionally broad: if each panelist had to name the three biggest challenges creatives face today, what would they be?

For Lenka Szántó, Creative Producer at TV Nova and Oneplay (formerly VOYO) in the Czech Republic, the answer began with financial reality. “The cost-effectiveness, of course, we need to manage that,” she noted. “Our budgets are not inflatable, and nobody is giving us any more money.” While co-productions can help, she stressed that they are “only a minor answer for some of the projects, not all of them.”

Beyond budgets, Szántó pointed to what she called “fear management.” In a period of constant transformation, she argued, the instinct of many broadcasters is to retreat into familiar formats. “Everything is changing, changing super quickly, and we can’t even manage to follow,” she said. “The comfort zone is to do what they are used to do. In fact, the answer to transformative times, I think, is to innovate.” Her third concern focused on talent development. Unlike the US, Europe still lacks a deeply rooted writers’ room culture that allows junior writers to grow over time. “We don’t have that environment for the talents to grow, and we need to fix that,” she said.

Award-winning actress, producer, writer and director Ella Mische who is the Co – President of the Hollywood Radio TV Association, approached the question from a transatlantic perspective shaped largely by the US market. To her, the defining challenges were finance, distribution and return on investment. “On the studio level, it’s all about return on investment,” she said. Even projects with major talent attached can collapse if projections do not justify the risk. “You can have stars attached. You can have a great story. But if somebody puts 20 million into something, and the projections are that they will only make 50 back, then the thinking is, it’s not worth the investment.”

Mische also emphasized that audience engagement no longer ends with production. “Film is a product,” she said. “So going beyond to social media, rolling it out in different inventive ways that it sticks with your audience… in the long term, is your long-term gain.”

Serbian producer Uglješa Jokić of Rainmaker Production reduced his answer to: “Finance, finance, finance.” Serbia, he noted, has become a highly developed hub for service production with experienced crews, sound stages and locations capable of supporting major international projects. Yet budgets remain the key obstacle. “We have the stories… they also have international appeal. But the budget, definitely,” he said, adding that distribution remains another weak point at the end of the chain.

Croatian producer Danijel Pek of Antitalent shared the financial concerns but added a more existential layer. He warned of a growing loss of cultural relevance driven by changing audience habits and platforms. “You will hear more often that people are talking about the latest video they saw on YouTube or the AI video that was produced by some guy in the basement… than the new episode of the six-part or twelve-part series,” he said. Still, Pek stressed that when a project truly resonates, the response can be overwhelming. “When we do something which is really relevant to the people, then it is really, really highly appreciated.”

For French screenwriter Marie Roussin, money remained central, but the political context in France added another layer of anxiety. She pointed to increasing pressure on public service broadcasters, still the country’s largest commissioners. “This is a major threat,” she said. She also criticized streamers’ tendency to concentrate budgets into fewer projects, arguing that this limits experimentation. “I see a tendency for streamers to invest a lot of their budget in fewer projects, which I think is also an issue regarding innovation.”

From the perspective of global co-production, Erik Pack, SVP Global Co-Production at Boat Rocker Studios, described a widening financial squeeze. “The cost of production has gone up. And the license fees have gone down,” he said. Broadcasters, he argued, increasingly expect producers to close financing gaps internationally. Creatively, Pack was blunt: “The commissioners and the buyers, they have lost their nerve.” Risk-taking has been replaced by formulaic commissioning, leaving little room for projects that sit outside established templates.

This sense of homogenization was echoed by Roussin, who observed that while streamers initially diversified the fiction landscape, they ultimately pushed both platforms and traditional broadcasters toward similar editorial lines.

From there, the conversation moved into one of the most persistent dilemmas facing CEE creators: how to balance strong local identity with international travel potential. Szántó rejected the idea of compromise altogether. “We don’t,” she said. “Our aim is to get more and more Czech subscribers and win the local market.” Paradoxically, she argued, the most local stories often travel best. “Our true stories that are put solidly into time and space in the Czech history, these travel.” What matters, she said, is universality in narrative language, not cultural dilution. “Since Aristotle came up with the formula, we’re keeping it.”

Jokić described international travel as a strategic consideration from the moment he reads a project. “It has to be local… but I always try to find something that will travel,” he said, calling success beyond national borders especially meaningful for producers from the region.

Pek offered a warning against reverse engineering content for export. “If you aim to do a project that will travel, you will fail,” he said. Belief in the story must come first. “If it’s good enough, then it will be recognized everywhere.”

When asked about Western misconceptions of the region, Mische highlighted a belief that Europe does not fully treat content as a business. She contrasted European funding systems with the US model, where creators often have direct financial exposure. “Everyone should have skin in the game,” she said, arguing that responsibility toward distribution and audience engagement should extend well beyond premieres and awards.

Turning to writers, Roussin described an ongoing struggle for creative authority, particularly for head writers trying to protect their vision. She cautioned against chasing commissioners’ short-term expectations. “Don’t wait to write the thing that they’re going to want right now,” she said. “It’s not going to be the same thing in six months.”

On co-productions, Pack struck a cautiously optimistic tone. The current instability of the US market, he argued, has pushed European partners closer together. “Europeans have said we’re not going to hold out for that fantasy Hulu deal… we’re just going to get on with it and do it together.” He praised Germany in particular for focusing on quality rather than forced local elements, rejecting the old ‘Euro-pudding’ mentality.

The panel also examined the growing role of algorithms in commissioning decisions. Mische who has worked with Netflix argued that while data can support executives, final judgment remains human. “There’s still humanity,” she said, rejecting the idea that greenlighting is fully automated.

Asked whether there is still room for original, author-driven projects in an IP-driven market, Pack was realistic. “It’s harder. It really is much harder,” he said, but insisted that strong champions can still push projects through. Jokić echoed this sentiment, rejecting a future ruled by algorithms. “When something is good, it’s good. And it will always find a way.”

The discussion then turned to development timelines and rising commissioning demands. Roussin described a climate of fear in which broadcasters increasingly require exhaustive documentation before committing. “At some point, you have to go beyond your fear as a commissioner,” she said, arguing that trust remains essential to creativity.

Shrinking budgets sparked reflections on innovation under constraint. Pek illustrated the point with a well-known anecdote from Rocky, where budget limitations led to one of the film’s most iconic scenes, that with the first date on the ice rink, when there was no budget for extras so Stallone paid $10 to the guy who was cleaning the ice and they skated alone, after rewriting the scene. However, he warned that declining production volume poses a greater long-term threat than individual budget cuts. Szántó shared a practical approach: involving editors earlier in development to streamline scripts and reduce costs without sacrificing quality.

On emerging funding and distribution models, Mische highlighted untapped exchanges between Europe and the US. She praised Europe’s openness to introspective, arthouse storytelling and described her festival as a platform born from growing international interest in the region. “Events like NEM are a wonderful thing,” she said.

Looking ahead, Pack argued that incentives alone are not enough to strengthen the CEE region. Developing writers and collaborative writing cultures is essential. Roussin agreed, emphasizing writers’ rooms as a key tool, even if budgets remain a constraint.

The panel closed with reflections on artificial intelligence, a central theme of NEM Zagreb this year. Szántó described AI as an efficient research tool but not a creative force. “It doesn’t have talent,” she said. Mische encouraged creatives to master the technology rather than fear it, stressing that humanity remains irreplaceable. Pek warned that AI’s tendency to tell users what they want to hear is dangerous for creativity. Pack was blunt: “I hate it, I’m afraid of it, and I wish they’d kill it.” Roussin expressed concern not for current creatives, but for future generations growing up dependent on AI.

As the session drew to a close, one conclusion stood out clearly: the pressures facing creatives today are not confined to any single country. They are shared across borders, systems and business models. What differs is not the struggle itself, but how each market navigates it. And in that sense, the panel’s title proved its point — it really isn’t hard only in your country.