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Association of European Performers’ Organisations

AEPO-ARTIS

AEPO-ARTIS is a non-profit representing 40 European performers' collective management organisations for audio and audiovisual sectors.

Lobbying Activity

Performers urge human-centered targets in EU Digital Decade review

9 Jan 2026
Topic — The European Commission reviews the 2030 digital infrastructure and policy programme targets.
Message — AEPO-ARTIS demands the programme prioritize a human-centered environment over technical infrastructure goals. They urge the Commission to include specific targets for fair remuneration and copyright literacy. Additionally, they call for urgent legal revisions to protect artists from generative AI.123
Why — These measures would secure fair pay and legal safeguards for performers in digital markets.45
Impact — Large technology platforms and AI developers would face new costs and stricter copyright requirements.67
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Meeting with Mario Furore (Member of the European Parliament)

22 Sept 2025 · Copyright and AI

Meeting with Mario Furore (Member of the European Parliament)

22 Sept 2025 · AI and copyright

Meeting with Thomas Schmitz (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen) and Unknown Organization

2 Jul 2025 · Copyright

Response to A Culture Compass for Europe

13 May 2025

A CULTURAL COMPASS FOR A GLOBAL CULTURAL SUPERPOWER POINTS TOWARDS PERFORMERS At the EP plenary of 31 March, Commissioner Glenn Micallef referred to Europe as a Global Cultural Superpower, while elaborating on the development of the Cultural Compass. The cultural compass aims to improve working conditions of artists and cultural professionals and unlock the competitive potential of the cultural and creative sectors, an initiative that we support. AEPO-ARTIS is a non-profit making organisation representing 41 European performers CMOs from 30 different countries, who in turn represent around 650.000 performers, actors, musicians, dancers, who are the faces of our culture. They are the ones that make our culture accessible. They represent the diversity that lies at the source of the EUs cultural competitive power. They are our superpower. The cultural compass needs to point towards them. Fair remuneration as working condition number one For performers the primary working condition to improve is their remuneration. If culture has to pay the rent, then culture has to pay. For any artist to survive as a professional, fair remuneration for the work delivered is primordial. While many studies show that the income of each artist comes from differing sources, it is important that each type of revenue complies with the principle of fairness. This is particularly true for income artists derive from their neighbouring rights. New forms of digital exploitation such as streaming and UGC have changed traditional business models to the extent that old-fashioned buy-out contracts are no longer justifiable. Additional protection mechanisms are needed that allow performers to maximise the multitude of micro-payments via intermediaries who put their interests first. Collective management organisations are the best-suited partner in this respect. Increase access to the cultural profession Access to culture is a core pillar of the cultural compass. It cannot be looked upon from the sole angle of providing citizens access to culture. It needs to look also at the opportunities for performers and other artists to access the cultural profession. Over the past decade, the music and audiovisual market in which our performers work, has been characterised by a growing amount of convergence and centralisation which has led to an increased reliance by artists on a limited number of international players to reach an audience. If the cultural compass truly seeks to unlock the competitive potential of the cultural and creative sectors it needs to urgently remove this and other market entry barriers that artists face. AI in service of a human society The cultural and creative sectors embrace the EU's determination to do everything it can to give AI every opportunity to develop. The objective can be achieved with the support of our cultural creative sector, but not at their expense. Not at the expense of our actors, our musicians or any other artist. Not at the expense of the sustainable objectives our sector has been working on for years. If the cultural compass truly aims at protecting our cultural heritage, it needs to stop AI developers from harvesting the fruits of others. In order to keep Europe at the level of a Global Cultural Superpower it needs its culture to remain human. Only then will EU based AI providers be able to become a true Global Superpower. And this means an increased investment in human created content. Data and transparency Sound and transparent policy making is based on reliable data. A Global Cultural Superpower knows the data behind its power. The EU should invest more in the generation of accurate and up to date data on each sector and make transparency a key pillar of the cultural compass. The establishment of initiatives such as the European Audiovisual Observatory for other sectors should be investigated. And within the sector itself, there should be stricter supervision of the transparency of producers and
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Meeting with Emma Rafowicz (Member of the European Parliament) and Netflix International B.V.

23 Apr 2025 · CULT

Meeting with Thomas Schmitz (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen), Werner Stengg (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen)

4 Apr 2025 · AI and copyright

Meeting with Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus (Member of the European Parliament)

2 Apr 2025 · Rights of Artists in the Cultural Sector

Meeting with Emmanuelle Du Chalard (Head of Unit Communications Networks, Content and Technology)

1 Apr 2025 · Exchange of views on the ratification of the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances and the Term Directive

Meeting with Emmanuelle Du Chalard (Head of Unit Communications Networks, Content and Technology)

26 Mar 2025 · WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), session 46th

Performers' group demands copyright experts on AI scientific panel

30 Oct 2024
Topic — Establishing rules for an independent scientific panel to support AI Act implementation.
Message — The group demands that the scientific panel include experts specialized in copyright and performers' related rights. They insist the regulation must specify fundamental rights rather than leaving it to officials' discretion. Furthermore, they seek formal mechanisms for civil society engagement in the panel's work.123
Why — This would safeguard performers' remuneration and ensure their legal rights are represented during AI oversight.45
Impact — The AI Office loses the ability to arbitrarily select experts without transparency or public oversight.67
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Meeting with Niklas Nienass (Member of the European Parliament) and Spotify and European Composer and Songwriter Alliance

8 Jun 2023 · Stakeholder meeting: European music streaming sector

Response to Fighting against online piracy of live content

10 Feb 2023

AEPO-ARTIS is a non-profit organisation that represents 37 European performers collective management organisations from 27 different countries. The number of performers, from the audio and audiovisual sector, represented by our 37 member organisations can be estimated at between 650,000 and 700,000. The main objectives of AEPO-ARTIS are to develop, strengthen and protect performers rights as well as to highlight the contribution that performers make to Europes rich and diverse cultural sector. We thank the European Commission (EC) for the opportunity to offer our feedback which can be found attached.
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Response to Proposal on the conditions for the remuneration of third country recorded music played in the EU

22 Sept 2022

AEPO-ARTIS is a non-profit making organisation that represents 37 European performers’ collective management organisations from 27 different countries, most of which collect the remuneration addressed by this call for evidence. The number of performers, from the audio and audiovisual sector, represented by our members can be estimated at 650,000. AEPO-ARTIS’s mission is to protect, strengthen and develop performers’ rights and to promote their collective management. Thereby, AEPO-ARTIS aspires to ensure all performers benefit from the exploitation of all their performances and thus contribute to creativity and cultural diversity. We wish to express our concerns with regard to the launch of this call for evidence. As the Commission notes, it has promoted an information and data gathering exercise in the Council working party since 2021. More significantly, in February 2022, the Commission launched a study on the legal and economic impacts of the RAAP judgement, to which many AEPO-ARTIS members contributed. Our members spent considerable amounts of time generating and compiling very substantial amounts of data (despite the limited resources of most performers’ CMOs) and provided them to the Commission, often at short notice. With this call for evidence, it now appears that they are obliged to repeat this exercise, to ensure that their views are (again) taken into account. This is particularly problematic since the call for evidence has been launched prior to the (now long over-due) publication of the study. This issue being of great importance to many AEPO-ARTIS members, we would welcome the opportunity to either express agreement with the findings of the study or to provide additional evidence to refute them. This is of course not possible due to the timing chosen by the Commission. In our view, if the findings of the study were in some way insufficient, then the specific areas in which this is the case should be made clear so that our members can have the opportunity to put forward a targeted response addressing the relevant necessary elements. We would encourage the Commission to publish the study without further delay but note that in any event it will be too late to allow AEPO-ARTIS to make any meaningful contribution to this call for evidence. Nevertheless, if – as we can deduct from the wording in the call for evidence – the Commission is considering to amend article 8(2) of the Directive 2006/115/EC on rental and lending rights (RLR directive), it should not limit itself to solve the problem of the outcome of the RAAP-case, but also solve the problem that gave rise to the RAAP-case: the inappropriate distribution of the equitable remuneration collected in favor of the producers of phonograms. As the above-mentioned study will undeniably show, Europe has a widespread practice whereby the single equitable remuneration for broadcasting and any communication to the public of phonograms is divided at source between the CMOs representing performers and CMOs representing phonogram producers. This is done on the basis of equality, whereby each category of rightholders bears the responsibility to distribute the 50% that are due to its rightholders on the basis of its own rules. However, this is specified neither in the European acquis communautaire, nor in Irish legislation. There is no legal anchoring of the 50/50 distribution key between performers and phonogram producers. In the absence of this legal basis, only 20% of the collected single equitable remuneration is paid to performers in Ireland. This is the situation that gave rise to the conflict between RAAP and PPI and this situation sadly enough continues to exist, fully in line with the ruling by the CJEU. If the Commission is of the opinion that it can neutralise the impact of C-265/19 by amending Article 8(2) Dir 2006/115/EC, we ask the Commission to take the opportunity to provide a solution to all the problems associated with this case.
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Meeting with Alina-Stefania Ujupan (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager), Werner Stengg (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager) and

27 Jan 2021 · Main challenges and priorities for Cultural and Creative Industries to overcome the crisis and allow for the sector to help rebuilding the European economy at large

Meeting with Agnieszka Skonieczna (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton) and International Federation of Actors and

18 Aug 2020 · Exchange on remuneration rights under the Copyright Directive and impact of the Covid crisis on artists and performers

Meeting with Mariya Gabriel (Commissioner)

9 Jun 2020 · Situation of performers faced by the COVID-19 crisis

Meeting with Inge Bernaerts (Cabinet of Commissioner Marianne Thyssen), Kasia Jurczak (Cabinet of Commissioner Marianne Thyssen) and PlayRight

24 Jan 2019 · Copyright Directive

Meeting with Eric Peters (Cabinet of Commissioner Mariya Gabriel)

24 Oct 2018 · EU copyright directive

Meeting with Mariya Gabriel (Commissioner)

22 May 2018 · Copyright reform

Meeting with Manuel Mateo Goyet (Cabinet of Commissioner Mariya Gabriel)

6 Oct 2017 · Copyright

Meeting with Anna Herold (Digital Economy)

18 Jul 2016 · copyright

Meeting with Szabolcs Horvath (Cabinet of Commissioner Tibor Navracsics)

5 Jul 2016 · Digital Single Market

Meeting with Andrus Ansip (Vice-President) and

1 Oct 2015 · Intellectual property rights, platforms

Meeting with Anna Herold (Digital Economy)

31 Mar 2015 · copyright

Meeting with Stig Joergen Gren (Cabinet of Vice-President Andrus Ansip)

24 Feb 2015 · Copyright