The most severe economic crisis since the second world war has shown that businesses with high standards of codetermination and participation are better at safeguarding jobs and more successful at crisis resolution! This makes it incomprehensible that the current proposal from the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council makes entirely inadequate provisions for securing workers’ codetermination rights. This applies most particularly to the EU Member States which already provide high standards of codetermination in businesses with more than 25 or 50 employees. The different codetermination cultures are completely ignored by the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council. In addition, no effective precautions against the potential danger of ‘codetermination evasion’ are provided. Separate administrative and commercial headquarters are nothing short of an invitation to evade codetermination.

‘The economic crisis has specifically shown that we need binding codetermination standards in European company law’, says Reiner Hoffmann, ETUC deputy General Secretary.