{"id":18689,"date":"2026-08-15T17:14:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T17:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/greece-law-unlock-royalties-frozen-since-2018-society-paid-11-million-euros\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T17:16:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T17:16:30","slug":"greece-law-unlock-royalties-frozen-since-2018-society-paid-11-million-euros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/greece-law-unlock-royalties-frozen-since-2018-society-paid-11-million-euros\/","title":{"rendered":"Greece Passed a Law to Unlock Royalties Frozen Since 2018. Another Greek Society Paid Out 11 Million Euros This Summer."},"content":{"rendered":"

Greece published Law 5324\/2026 in the Government Gazette on 30 July 2026, and buried in a statute mostly about museums, cultural heritage and underwater archaeology is a clause about music royalties that have not moved since 2018.<\/p>\n

It is Article 120, and it is the most consequential thing to happen to Greek songwriter money in years.<\/p>\n

The clause that unfreezes 2018<\/h2>\n

CMO means collective management organisation: the body that licenses songs to radio, venues and platforms, then pays songwriters and publishers.<\/p>\n

Greece’s was AEPI. Its licence was revoked in 2018 and the company went into insolvency, leaving a pool of royalties collected from users but never distributed to the people who wrote the songs.<\/p>\n

Article 120 creates a dedicated mechanism for that pool. It expressly empowers the insolvency administrator to participate in managing and distributing the funds, which is the legal authority that had been missing.<\/p>\n

A briefing from Bernitsas Law<\/a>, published 7 August 2026 by Lambros Belessis and Marialena Mavrikaki, describes the aim as enabling payment of long-outstanding royalties to eligible creators in a process unresolved for several years.<\/p>\n

The law names no amount and sets no deadline.<\/p>\n

For scale: in a January 2026 interview with George Gilson for To Vima<\/a>, EDEM general director Louka Katseli said the family that ran AEPI took an estimated 40 million euros in four years. AEPI’s general manager was convicted in April 2025 and sentenced to nine years, later reduced to seven.<\/p>\n

The levy clock just slowed to three years<\/h2>\n

This part touches every rightsholder collecting in Greece today, not only AEPI’s creditors.<\/p>\n

Private copying remuneration is the levy on blank media and recording-capable devices, split among categories of rightsholders. The Hellenic Copyright Organisation, known as OPI, set that allocation every year.<\/p>\n

Articles 117 and 130 replace the annual cycle with a three-year one, unless the competent CMOs agree a split sooner. As a transitional measure, the allocation adopted for 2025 carries through 2026 and 2027.<\/p>\n

Read that as predictability for the societies and a frozen share for anyone who thinks their category is under-weighted. The next scheduled argument is 2028.<\/p>\n

The rest is housekeeping with teeth. Article 115 tightens how equitable remuneration is set when a CMO and a user cannot agree. Article 116 lets CMOs spend retained deductions on social and cultural programmes. Articles 118, 119 and 129 rework OPI’s funding and the appointment of its director.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the half of the market that pays on time<\/h2>\n

AUTODIA, the other major Greek music society, paid out more than 11 million euros net to its creators and rightsholders for the first half of 2026, up 20% on the same period in 2025, with statements going out from 8 July, as reported by Mononews<\/a>. Its approved 2025 results show:<\/p>\n