The revision of the Directive on European Works Councils. Political genesis and new coverages of the revised Directive on European works councils

Abstract

The creation of a body of participation rights for European employees in transnational companies constitutes a major challenge in the road to the construction of the European system of industrial relations. The adoption of the Directive 94/45/EC in 22th September 1994 opened the way for establishing more than 800 European works councils in transnational firms with operations in, al least, two national members of the European Union. Once tested the validity of the regulation for the promotion of information and consultation practices (and identified its limitations), a complex political debate was initatied on the revision the Directive. As a result of this debate, a new legal piece on European works council was adopted by the European Parlament and the European Council in 6th May 2009: the Directive 2009/38/CE. The aim of the article is to analyse the contribution of the successful Directive 94/45/CE, to assess the expected impact of the revised Directive and to evaluate the political process which has led to the adoption of the new regulation on information and consultation of employees in transnational firms. The exercise goes far beyond the study of firm-level European industrial relations. First, the tensions behind the regulatory process which resulted into the Directive 2009/38/CE are quite similar to those which hinder and/or promote advances at sectoral and cross-sectoral European industrial relations. And second, the analysis sheds light to the complexity of the political decision-making instruments and mechanisms in the Enlarged Europe.