Evolution of EU policies on business transfer to employees, Workers’ Buyouts (WBO), through the lens of the social economy

Abstract

This article analyses the institutional evolution of workers’ buyouts in the European Union between 1980 and 2025, understood as processes through which workers collectively acquire ownership of their firms in contexts of crisis, restructuring or the absence of succession. Drawing on a systematic documentary review of EU communications, resolutions, directives and technical studies, it reconstructs the main phases of the legal, programmatic and financial development that have shaped this instrument within the field of the social economy. The study organises the recognised typologies according to motivation and conversion trajectory, identifies the public policy instruments employed and describes their progressive institutionalisation across levels of government. The approach combines a longitudinal reading of forty-five years with an institutional comparison of regulatory frameworks and support infrastructures, making it possible to identify conditions associated with business continuity and employment preservation from an interpretive, non-causal perspective. The main contribution lies in a rigorous systematisation that integrates analytical categories, repertoires of instruments and key actors, and that provides a map of windows of opportunity for business transfer to employees. The article also delineates a set of methodological limitations and suggests a legal and institutional research agenda centred on the comparison of national transfer frameworks, workers’ information and preferential acquisition rights, the interaction between insolvency, company, labour, tax and State-aid law, the adequacy of worker cooperatives and employee-owned companies, the national implementation of the Social Economy Action Plan and the 2023 Council Recommendation, and the possibilities and limits of EU harmonisation.