Brussels, 12/01/2004 (Agence Europe) - In Strasbourg on Thursday the European Parliament will be giving its opinion of the own initiative report by Austrian Green MEP Raina Mercedes Echerer on an EU framework for companies managing royalties and copyright. Echerer wants the Commission, as Guardian of the Treaties, to control the implementation and respect of EU directives on copyright and to take vigorous action against violations of copyright. Echerer (who is a theatre, film and TV actress) pointed out that companies managing royalties are voluntary groups of authors and musicians or people acting on their behalf to manage the intangible and business interests of their intellectual property or their performances at home and abroad. The Echerer report invites the Commission to take account of the role of companies whose activities will be covered by the future proposal on the internal market for services and their responsibilities with regard to culture, social life and society in general. In terms of competition, the report calls for the Commission to monitor vertical concentration of business interests in the media and the impact of this on the management of copyright, taking measures as required. In terms of the information society, the report calls on the Commission to take account, when assessing the issue of companies managing royalties, of the cultural dimension of royalty collection. It also calls for an end to conflicts of interest (when the holders of copyright and those making use of the copyright are one and the same person) in the way companies managing royalties are organised; and for effective, independent and regular control mechanisms to be established in all Member States to cover all aspects of copyright, including the legal, social, business and cultural domains. The report calls on the Commission to control the implementation of EU law covering copyright and to ensure it is applied in a way consistent with EU law. Along the lines of the Media+ programme, it calls for the introduction of a rule establishing the timespan for royalties to be paid (three years) particularly for television, to reinforce the position of independent producers and sure better circulation of European broadcasting.