Press release
Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday 2 December 2025 International Book Sector Organisations Jointly Establish New Association: Public Lending Right International (PLRI)
Today, Public Lending Right International (PLRI) was established as an international association to bring together lending rights stakeholders from across the globe — allowing them to exchange best practices, while providing advice and technical assistance to countries looking to set up PLR systems for the first time or to improve PLR systems already established. The board of directors, drawn from each of the seven founding members, elected Arjen Polman, CEO of Stichting Leenrecht in the Netherlands, as its President. Commenting on the founding of the association, Arjen Polman said: Formally establishing PLRI after 30 years of public lending right supporting text authors, visual authors, translators and publishers is a great step forward. We now invite all organisations that manage or distribute public lending rights to become members of PLRI as well as authors’ and other rightsholders’ organisations as they are also eligible. Lending of copyrighted texts and images is an exclusive right of the authors and other rightsholders. For public lending by public libraries however, an exception to copyright may be provided and/or a collective remuneration scheme (either copyright based or not) may be established. The Public Lending Right (PLR) is the right of authors and, as appropriate, other rightsholders to receive a fair payment for public lending by and in public libraries. In every PLR country the use of authors’ works in public libraries forms the bedrock of the system. PLR is therefore essential to ensure the sustainability of the creative and publishing sector, as well as a broad and diverse offering in public libraries. The founding organisations of PLRI are EVA (European Visual Artists), EWC (European Writers’ Council), FEP (Federation of European Publishers), IPA (International Publishers Association) and three collective management organisations active in the collection and distribution of public lending rights: Reprobel (Belgium), La Sofia (France) and Stichting Leenrecht (The Netherlands). PLRI had been operating as an informal global network since 1995. The new association, now jointly established by the international book sector’s federations formally under Swiss law with its headquarters in Geneva, will organise a PLR International Conference in 2026. For more information, contact Arjen Polman, arjen.polman@plrinternational.com
DOWNLOAD / PDF / EN →
DOWNLOAD / PDF / FR →
