Brussels, 04/05/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has warned sixteen organisations that collecting royalties on behalf of music authors is potentially in breach of European Union competition rules. The Santiago Agreement was notified to the Commission in April 2001 by the collecting societies of the UK (PRS), France (SACEM), Germany (GEMA) and the Netherlands (BUMA), which were subsequently joined by all societies in the European Economic Area (except for the Portuguese society SPA) as well as by the Swiss society (SUISA). The purpose of the agreement is to allow each of the participating societies to grant to online commercial users "one-stop shop" copyright licenses which include the music repertoires of all societies and which are valid in all their territories. The Commission strongly is not hostile to the "one-stop shop" principle and fully acknowledges the need to ensure adequate copyright protection. However, the Commission also considers that such crucial developments could lead to markets being "stitched up" and had to lead to increasing freedom of choice by consumers and commercial users in their own countries. The system compels site providers to automatically go through the different national structures. The Commission considers that the absence of competition between national copyright companies in Europe created by the Santiago Agreement hinders the completion of a genuine single market in the area of copyright management services and could lead to unjustified loss of efficiency in the provision of on-line musical services to the detriment of consumers. The collecting societies have two and a half months to reply to the Commission's objections.