Reprobel is a “management company” officially authorized by ministerial decree. Management companies are a special type of organization. They are copyright organizations that collect, manage, and distribute copyright royalties or legally mandated compensations on behalf of large groups of rights holders. These management companies are owned by the rights holders themselves.

Thanks to their large membership base, management companies make life easier not only for rights holders but also for users. They act as a central point of contact for all forms of use of copyright-protected works that fall under their specific repertoire and management mandate.

Reprobel is the central management company for Belgian authors and publishers. It oversees the paper and digital reuse of copyright-protected texts and still images that fall under its legal mandate or specific management responsibilities, within the boundaries of the licenses it defines. This includes, for example, professional literature, educational and scientific works, fiction and non-fiction, children’s books, comics, (certain uses of) press articles, photographs, paintings, sculptures, illustrations, cartoons, song lyrics, quotes, and more.

For certain legally mandated compensations, Reprobel also represents, in addition to authors and publishers, other types of rights holders—specifically those of sound recordings and audiovisual works.

Management companies distribute all collected fees in full to the rights holders. They deduct management costs, but those are legally capped. Reprobel’s management costs are only half of the legal maximum, as we aim to ensure that as much of the collected revenue as possible goes to the rights holders. This reflects our commitment to transparency and accountability.

Reprobel is a cooperative company (cv), but not a traditional commercial business. Since our founding in 1994, we have had one mission: to ensure that authors and publishers of copyright-protected texts and still images receive fair compensation for the reuse of their works—even in today’s digital world. This is done through legally mandated payments as well as our combined license system, bizili by Reprobel.

Reprobel, like all other management companies operating in Belgium, is monitored by the Control Unit for Management Companies under the Ministry of Economy (FOD Economie). This service monitors the legality of all Reprobel’s activities: its licensing rates, its adherence to its own statutes and governing documents, the transparency and diligence of its management, and the efficiency and timeliness of its distributions. In addition, Reprobel is also audited by its external auditor, RSM.

Reprobel’s shareholders are the fifteen Belgian management companies, which themselves represent authors and/or publishers. As such, Reprobel usually does not pay fees directly to individual rights holders, although it can do so in exceptional cases. The member management companies of Reprobel are legally part of its General Assembly and Board of Directors. This is why Reprobel is considered a central management company—a management company of management companies.

Reprobel shares its offices with Auvibel at Tour & Taxis in Brussels. Although both are operationally integrated, they remain legally two completely separate companies. The CEO of both Reprobel and Auvibel is Jean-Paul Langhoor – Beitia.

As a unique one-stop-shop Reprobel collects remunerations from a number of ‘legal licenses’. These are statutory exceptions to the ordinary, exclusive copyright with a remuneration determined by law and royal decree. Under a statutory license, a user – unlike in ordinary copyright – does not need the prior permission of the rights holders to perform copyright-relevant acts within the limits of the statutory exception. So, performing these kinds of acts is allowed because the law says so, but users are obliged to make an annual declaration to Reprobel. And also liable for remuneration, within the legal limits.

The legal licenses that Reprobel collects centrally are the reprography remuneration and the parallel publishing remuneration (private and public sector, photocopies of protected work), the remuneration for education and scientific research and the remuneration for public lending rights. All involve professional reuse of copyrighted texts and images. However, for teaching and scientific research and for public lending, the legal remuneration scheme also includes the reuse of sound and audiovisual works within the limits of the underlying legal exception. In these fields, Reprobel also legally represents the rights holders on these last two types of copyrighted works. For this purpose it has concluded specific mandate agreements with the central copyright management company Auvibel.

In addition, Reprobel also offers a broad combined license for both paper and digital reproductions and well-defined forms of digital distribution of copyright protected texts and still images in the private and public sector: bizili by Reprobel. It does so (through its member management companies) with the mandate of more than 60,000 Belgian authors and more than 400 Belgian publishers in all genres, and with the mandate of its foreign partner organizations for bizili’s worldwide repertoire. bizili’s license fees must be notified in advance to the Control Service of Management Companies at the FPS Economy (art. XI.272 Code of Economic Law). bizili covers all acts of use within the license limits and belonging to the (very broad) national and international repertoire of Reprobel.

The difference between bizili by Reprobel and the more limited reprography declaration is explained in detail here.

Reprobel is a central copyright management company, a management company of management companies. Its partners are therefore not the individual rights holders, but themselves management companies of authors and/or publishers.

Therefore, in principle, Reprobel does not distribute the remunerations it collects among the individual rights holders (authors and publishers). It distributes the remunerations among its 15 member management companies of authors and publishers, and this on the basis of studies and available market data.

There are two distribution colleges within Reprobel: the Authors’ College in which the authors’ management companies are represented, and the Publishers’ College in which the publishers’ management companies are represented. These colleges distribute the collected remunerations completely autonomously from each other. They make the distribution initially on the basis of legal or organizational keys between authors and publishers; then on the basis of keys between the categories of work (authors) and carriers (publishers); and finally via specific keys to determine the share of each college member within these categories or carriers. In principle, the fees are shared in halves between authors and publishers, except for public lending rights (70% authors, 30% publishers).

Reprobel has specific distribution rules for each collection source, and that for its two Colleges. These distribution rules must be notified in advance to the Control Service for Management Companies at the FPS Economy (art. XI.272 Code of Economic Law). For some “statutory licenses,” distribution rules require ministerial approval.

Individual right holders can also apply directly for remunerations from Reprobel for legal licenses, although this happens rather exceptionally. They can submit their application for remuneration via the contact form of Reprobel. In practice this happens extremely rarely, because most rights holders are affiliated with a management company and because Reprobel outsources the concrete calculation of this type of remuneration claim to the most relevant member management company. Moreover, our member management companies also offer interesting additional services to rights holders. It is therefore easier to approach a Reprobel member management company directly for remunerations, and not Reprobel itself.

For the legal remunerations for education and scientific research and for public lending rights, Reprobel collects the remunerations not only for authors and publishers, but also for the right holders of sound and audiovisual works. Reprobel therefore pays part of these remunerations to the central management company Auvibel, which represents the right holders of sound and audiovisual works in these fields and which also collects and distributes the legal private copying remuneration. Reprobel and Auvibel have concluded specific mandate agreements in this respect.

Reprobel makes remunerations available for distribution in its Colleges twice a year: provisionally made available by its Board of Directors in the course of the financial year (for collections from 1 January to 30 September of the current financial year), and definitively made available by its Ordinary General Meeting in June of the calendar year following the financial year (collections of the entire financial year that has elapsed). The provisional disposition is an advance on the final disposition, and therefore does not affect the latter.

The legal maximum turnaround time for distributions and payments to the partners and mandate issuers of Reprobel is in principle nine months from the closing of the financial year in which the remunerations were collected. If Reprobel exceeds this turnaround time, it reports this transparently in its annual report. For payments received by Reprobel from abroad, a specific maximum period of six months from the receipt of the payment applies.

No, and fortunately so.

After all, users in the Belgian professional sectors (private and public sectors, recognized education and scientific research and recognized public libraries) use not only Belgian copyrighted texts and still images, but often foreign source works as well.

That is why Reprobel has concluded more than 40 international representation agreements with foreign partner organizations. These agreements generally regulate not only the use of foreign texts and images in the Belgian professional sectors, but also the use of Belgian repertoire abroad. As a result, Reprobel can also offer an almost worldwide repertoire in its combined license bizili by Reprobel for the private and public sectors, which regulates both paper reproductions and the most common forms of digital reuse within the broad license boundaries. These international agreements provide in most cases for a reciprocal payment of remunerations: by the foreign partner organization to Reprobel for the use of Belgian texts and images and vice versa by Reprobel to the foreign partner for the use of the partner’s repertoire in its licenses. This type of agreement also regulates the mutual payment of legal remunerations (reprography, teaching/research and in some cases public lending). You can find the repertoire of the foreign partner organizations of Reprobel and possible exclusions from this repertoire (‘opt-outs’) on the website of the foreign partner for the country in question. Some member-management companies of Reprobel have direct mandate agreements with foreign partner companies for well-defined categories of work or carriers and/or for well-defined uses.

Reprobel has specific distribution rules for remunerations from or to foreign countries for each collection source.

Within the framework of its international representation agreements, Reprobel generally guarantees the “national treatment” of foreign rights holders. This means that it treats these rights holders as if they were Belgian rights holders, through specific distribution rules. This principle is in any case guaranteed towards rights holders (authors and publishers) in another EU member state. For most countries outside the EU, this principle also applies to authors (under the Berne Convention), but not necessarily to publishers. If ‘national treatment’ does not apply, then the principle of ‘reciprocity’ comes into play and foreign rights holders receive rights from Belgian rights holders only to the extent that these rights are also guaranteed for Belgian rights holders in the country in question.

Reprobel is an active member of its world organization IFRRO.

As a ministerially licensed (central) management company, Reprobel operates under the external legality supervision of the Control Unit for Management Companies at the Ministry of Economy. The Inspection Department supervises the legality of what Reprobel does and the respect of its organic documents, among other things concerning its licence fees and distributions. Moreover, Reprobel is externally audited by its statutory auditor, RSM. Reprobel is also controlled internally by its 15 member management companies, which are statutorily represented in its general assembly and its board of directors. After all, management companies are from and for the rights holders, and they are therefore primarily controlled by the rights holders themselves.

Reprobel’s organic documents contain provisions on internal control and conflicts of interest, in accordance with the regulations relating to the collective management of copyrights.

Reprobel collected just under 30 million euros, VAT exclusive, in the fiscal year 2024. That is a historical record in absolute figures, but it is not much more than what Reprobel collected ten years ago via (mainly) the legal remuneration on photocopiers and multifunctional printers, if you take into account the considerable inflation. Back then, the operation of Reprobel was still limited to photocopies of copyrighted texts and images; since 2020, Reprobel has also been offering a successful complementary digital license for the private and public sector: bizili by Reprobel. In addition to paper reproductions, this license also regulates the most common forms of digital reuse of domestic and foreign copyrighted texts and still images.

Reprobel is the world leader in per capita collections in the field of business licensing for copyrighted texts and still images in the private and public sectors. Before Switzerland and the Nordic countries. In absolute figures, Reprobel is number 4 worldwide in this field, after the US, the UK and France. But Belgium is of course much smaller than these countries. The market coverage of bizili by Reprobel is almost entirely with the top 500 Belgian companies, and in the public sector. In addition, more than 90,000 smaller Belgian companies, self-employed persons, non-profit organizations and government institutions have also subscribed to bizili. Reprobel has concluded more than 60 sector agreements related to bizili, with interest groups in almost all professional sectors.

Since its inception in 1994, Reprobel has already invested half a billion euros in the Belgian creative sector. On an annual basis, it distributes on average between 20 and 30 million euros among the rights holders. The exact amount varies depending on its gross collections, internal distribution agreements and the reserves and commissions that it is legally required to set aside as a management company.

Reprobel has 15 Belgian member management companies of authors and publishers. Through its Belgian partners, Reprobel represents virtually all Belgian authors and publishers: more than 60,000 authors in all genres of texts and still images and more than 400 publishers from large to small. Through more than 40 international representation agreements, Reprobel also represents many hundreds of thousands of foreign authors and publishers worldwide, and many millions of copyrighted source works.

The management costs of Reprobel are only about half of the legal maximum. We want to work as efficiently as possible so that as much money as possible flows back to the rights holders. That is our mission, every day. The Reprobel team consists of 12.6 full-time equivalent employees. We serve more than 200,000 companies and other professional users in Belgium. We do this, among other things, via a user-friendly online declaration portal.

Because a collecting society collects and distributes significant amounts of royalties and statutory fees collectively on behalf of a large number of rights holders, a strict regulatory framework applies in relation to its organization, tariffs, collections, non-discriminatory management, distributions, internal and external control, transparency and accounting standards. As a management company, Reprobel must therefore report transparently on its collections, management and distributions.

You will find all relevant information in its annual report.

• Annual report financial year 2024
• Annual report financial year 2023
• Annual report financial year 2022
• Annual report financial year 2021
• Annual report financial year 2020
• Annual report financial year 2019
• Annual report financial year 2018

The articles of association of Reprobel can be found here. The statutes are part of the organic documents of Reprobel, which also include its general regulations, the internal regulations of the colleges, the distribution rules of the colleges and its collection and pricing rules M.2023.003 for bizili by Reprobel (digital licence private and public sector).

Reprobel’s legally disclosable policy notes can be found here.

The member management companies (associates / directors) of Reprobel can be found here.

A list of Reprobel’s international representation agreements can be found here.