European Parliament
O-000020/2012
(B7-0034/2012)
Monica Luisa Macovei,
on behalf of the PPE Group.
Mr President, I welcome the Commission decision to propose a directive on collective rights management, and I also welcome the open legislative process just described by the Commissioner, which included a public consultation to hear the voices and opinions of all parties involved.
The current 2005 recommendation from the Commission has proved insufficient in regulating the collective cross-border management of copyright and related rights for on-line music services.
Our goal is to safeguard the interests of authors in Europe and to ensure cultural diversity in a legal, fair and transparent system of competition. At present there is a climate of legal uncertainty for rights-holders, for users and especially for broadcasters, who – for instance – experience legal uncertainty as to which licensing regime would apply to their services.
I believe that the Commission proposal should include some of the following principles:
Firstly, the holders of the rights, either individuals or legal persons holding on-line rights, should be able to chose freely any collective rights managers for the management of on-line rights related to legitimate on-line music services, no matter where the rights-holder or the collective rights manager is in the European Union.
Secondly, royalties collected by collective rights managers on behalf of rights-holders should be distributed fairly and without discrimination on the basis of residence or nationality or whether they are composers, performers, publishers or other categories of rights-holders.
Collective rights managers should be able to provide commercial users based anywhere in the European Union with pan-European and multi-territorial licences for online users, including mobile phone users, on firm and individually negotiated terms and without discrimination among users.
Lastly, in the event of disputes, parties should have access to effective and inexpensive dispute settlement mechanisms which do not burden users with unreasonable legal costs.

