rec_29

(29) The distribution and payment of amounts due to individual rightholders or, as the case may be, to categories of rightholders, should be carried out in a timely manner and in accordance with the general policy on distribution of the collective management organisation concerned, including when they are performed via another entity representing the rightholders. Only objective reasons beyond the control of a collective management organisation can justify delay in the distribution and payment of amounts due to rightholders. Therefore, circumstances such as the rights revenue having been invested subject to a maturity date should not qualify as valid reasons for such a delay. It is appropriate to leave it to Member States to decide on rules ensuring timely distribution and the effective search for, and identification of, rightholders in cases where such objective reasons occur. In order to ensure that the amounts due to rightholders are appropriately and effectively distributed, without prejudice to the possibility for Member States to provide for more stringent rules, it is necessary to require collective management organisations to take reasonable and diligent measures, on the basis of good faith, to identify and locate the relevant rightholders. It is also appropriate that members of a collective management organisation, to the extent allowed for under national law, should decide on the use of any amounts that cannot be distributed in situations where rightholders entitled to those amounts cannot be identified or located.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-10-31 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.