Plan suggests general rules for worker consultation

Date: 16/11/1995

By Michael Mann

THE European Commission is considering drawing up general EU rules on worker consultation in national undertakings rather than continuing to deal with it in separate pieces of company legislation.

The idea has come from Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn and Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti, who hope this might provide the key to unblocking ministerial discussions on several proposals containing forms of employee involvement in corporate decision-making.

These include the European company statute, the statute for a European association, the statute for a European cooperative, and the statute for a European Mutual Society.

The Commission has come up with two options for taking the issue of worker consultation out of all four statutes and other directives stalled on the same grounds.

The first would be to bar European companies from being established in a member state which had not adopted the European Works Councils Directive, effectively excluding the UK, or to apply the directive to new companies and associations without any conditions governing where they could be established.

The second option is to establish a general European framework on informing and consulting employees, thus allowing the consultation elements to be removed from the outstanding proposals. The Commission is confident that these could then be brought closer to agreement.

Leaving things as they stand and continuing to negotiate on individual proposals “seems to offer little hope of progress”, the Commission points out.

Flynn believes that progress is particularly vital on the European company statute to attract the private capital needed to set up a number of large Trans-European Networks.

Commission officials stress that all member states except the UK and Ireland already have minimum provisions for worker consultation.

To encourage the greatest possible debate, the Commission has asked for input from all sectors, including the EU social partners.

Although this will be regarded as the first stage of consultation process under the Social Protocol, the social partners will not have to reply within the usual time limit of six weeks.