Mergers of producer organisations
Article 15
1. Where producer organisations merge, the producer organisation resulting from the merger shall assume the rights and obligations of the individual producer organisations that merged. The Member State shall ensure that the new producer organisation complies with all recognition criteria and shall assign to it a new number for the purposes of the unique identification system as referred to in Article 22 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/892. The producer organisation resulting from the merger may either operate the programmes in parallel and separately until 1 January of the year following the merger, or merge the operational programmes from the moment of the merger. Article 34 of this Regulation shall apply to operational programmes that are merged. 2. By way of derogation from the second subparagraph of paragraph 1, Member States may authorise on the basis of a duly substantiated request, operational programmes to continue to be implemented in parallel until they reach their natural conclusion.