Equal treatment is a fundamental principle that should apply to music creators worldwide.

National treatment is a fundamental principle in international intellectual property law. It says that when a country grants copyright or related rights to its own citizens, it must extend those same rights to foreigners on equal terms. The principle dates to the Berne Convention of 1886 and runs through every major copyright treaty since, from the Rome Convention, TRIPS, the WIPO Copyright Treaty, and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT).

The logic is simple: a country can decide what rights to grant, but once it decides, it can't pick and choose who gets those rights based on nationality. If France pays its own performers when their music is broadcast on French radio, France must pay foreign performers under the same rules. The rights themselves are a sovereign choice; the discrimination in who receives them is not.

Because many European countries have used a workaround called “reciprocity." Under this approach, a country pays foreign artists only if the foreign artist's home country pays its artists in return. The US doesn't have a terrestrial radio performance right for sound recordings - AM/FM stations don't pay performers when they play their songs - so European countries have used that as justification to withhold royalties from American performers when their music is played on European radio. The result is a form of nationality-based discrimination. American performers whose songs play on radio stations in London, Paris, and Madrid are treated differently from British, French, and Spanish performers whose songs play on those exact same stations. The use is identical. The only difference is the passport of the performer.

The lack of an AM/FM performance right in the US is a legacy of broadcaster lobbying -specifically, the National Association of Broadcasters' century-long campaign to keep terrestrial radio royalty-free. American performers didn't choose this arrangement. They've been fighting against it for decades, including supporting the American Music Fairness Act and its legislative predecessors. When European countries withhold royalties from American performers as "retaliation," they're punishing the artists for a policy outcome forced on them by the very industry that benefits from underpaying them at home.

Yes. In the 2020 RAAP ruling (Case C-265/19), the Court of Justice of the European Union held that all performers, regardless of nationality, are entitled to equitable remuneration when their music is played publicly in the EU. The court rooted its decision in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which treats intellectual property as a fundamental right that cannot be limited based on nationality without explicit EU-level legislation.

The court also addressed the question of who gets to make the reciprocity-versus-national-treatment choice. Its answer: the EU itself, not individual member states. Reciprocity reservations are an exercise of the EU's exclusive external competence. Member states like Ireland, France, and the Netherlands cannot unilaterally decide to withhold royalties from American performers; only the European Union acting collectively can introduce such a limitation, and only through formal legislation that meets the requirements of the Charter.

In 2024, the CJEU reinforced and extended this logic in Kwantum v. Vitra (Case C-227/23). The court ruled that EU member states cannot apply the Berne Convention's material reciprocity test to deny copyright protection to non-EU works of applied art either. The same principle applies: harmonized EU copyright law leaves no room for member states to discriminate against foreign rights holders based on nationality.

Estimates vary, but the numbers are consistently large.

SoundExchange has estimated that American performers and rights holders lose roughly $200 million to $300 million annually in royalties they would receive if other countries provided full national treatment. From the European side, IMPALA, the European independent music industry association, has estimated that approximately €125 million flows annually from EU collecting societies that would otherwise stay with European performers if reciprocity remained in force, money that would now go to American rights holders under full national treatment.

The UK's 2024 Impact Assessment, attached to its public performance rights consultation, calculated that extending broad protection to US performers in the UK alone would transfer approximately £230 million from US labels to US performers over the 2024-2033 period - this is the share that would go to US performers from US-controlled rights, not the total US flow.

In some European countries, the royalties owed to American performers are simply not collected because reciprocity rules exclude them from the tariff structure. In others, France being the most prominent example, the royalties for American performers' work are collected from broadcasters and venues and then diverted away from the American artists who earned them. In France's case, the funds collected for US artists are channeled into French cultural and artistic programs rather than being distributed to the American performers and rights holders who created the music.