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(3) Transposition process
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DOCUMENTS: - State of transposition: List of countries having transposed the SE legislation so far
 Table: Make up of Special Negotiating Body
Lionel Fulton, Labour Research department, 15.12.2005)
By the end of 2005, twenty-two out of 28 EEA states had transposed the Directive on employee involvement in European Companies. This table shows the composition of the Special Negotiating Body and the role that external trade union members can play in all 22 states. It also provides information on the draft proposals for three other states.
- ARTICLE: Anchoring the European Company in national law (Lionel Fulton, Labour Research Department)
This report examines the progress that had been made by the beginning of December 2005 on implementing the legislation in the 28 EEA states. It finds that, while much progress has been made, there are still some states that are lagging behind. It also looks at how the legislation that provides for the involvement of employees has been implemented. Here it finds that although there are large areas where national legislation closely follows the EU-wide model, there are other areas where there are important differences between member states.
- SE CHECKLISTS (Link)
The checklists have been prepared in a collaboration between UNI-Europa and ETUI-REHS to provide information on crucial aspects of the SE legislation. - Checklist 1: Monitoring the national transposition processes of the SE legislation (May 2004)
- Checklist 2: Employee Participation in European Companies (SEs) - Checklist and Information for Employee Representatives and their Trade Unions (December 2004)
- PAPER :
 Why it is important for employees that the SE Directive is transposed into national law by 8 October 2004 by Norbert Kluge, ETUI (pdf, 38 KB)
 Warum es aus Arbeitnehmersicht wichtig ist, die SE-Richtlinie rechtzeitig bis 8.Oktober 2004 in nationales Recht umzusetzen von Norbert Kluge, EGI (pdf, 37 KB)
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Academic interest in (supervisory) boards in the past focused mainly on their monitoring and control role, as explained by agency theory. Now diversity research on (supervisory) boards examines also process, dynamics and outcomes or focuses on exploring the influence of certain characteristics of (supervisory) board members that make a difference. Board members can be diverse as regards gender, other demographic variables, ethnicity, educational/professional background and the interests they represent, i.e. the interests of shareholders, employees, management or other stakeholders.
Report: Women on (Supervisory) Boards
(December 2005, Sandra Schwimbersky)
The report provides a first insight into a field of research that requires more attention in the future and which might provide general frameworks for the analysis of the impact of board member characteristics on outcomes and processes. Recently, two national initiatives, one German and the other Norwegian, aimed at increasing the number of women on supervisory boards. Since January 2004, 40% of board members in state-owned enterprises in Norway must be women. Since January 2006, this is also the case for newly established public limited companies. For existing public limited companies a transitional period of two years is provided. On average, women occupy 8% of corporate boardroom seats in the largest companies in Europe. However, the percentage varies from 22% in Norway to 2% in Italy. Although some of the data seem quite promising it must be pointed out large firms are not necessarily representative of the national situation. Moreover, a considerable number of female (supervisory) board members are employee or trade union representatives in some countries, for instance in France 10 out of 41 and in Germany 66 out of 83.
Documents/ Links:
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Looking at the first SEs to have been established, in a number of cases the company declared that the SE does not have any employees at the time of registration. As a consequence, no negotiations with the employees took place as required by the SE directive and its national transpositions. In most cases, registration was accepted nevertheless. However, nobody knows what will happen when such companies come to have employees at a later point in time. Will there be negotiations at that time? Business interests of some legal firms may well have motivated this kind of SE foundation, based on an intention simply to sell the SE as an “empty shell company” when the time is right.
German law professor Bernhard Blanke argues in his legal assessment (which was commissioned by the German Hans Böckler Foundation) that there always need to be negotiations under the SE directive. If not, registration has to be refused because such SE shells were plainly not the intention of the European legislator.
It would be worth obtaining information on similar SE cases in other EU member states, including how they were dealt with and evaluated.
Download summary in EN (pdf).
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(5) Other relevant information (Info-Box)
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Links:
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