European Works Councils

Abstract

The revision of the European Works Council (EWC) Directive is in train and is part of the European Union's social policy agenda for 2002/2003. The start of the 'Article 6 phase' of legally enforceable EWCs in September 1996 marked another fundamental change in the context for negotiation as the employee side had the right to initiate the EWC process. The issue of the Europeanisation of industrial relations has been approached from a variety of angles in the literature. The implications of EWCs for national industrial relations systems thus emerges as an empirical testing ground for the academic debate about the impact of EWCs on the Europeanisation of industrial relations. Empirical findings on the development of EWCs tends to push out beyond a pure 'horizontal Europeanisation', in that a distinctive trans- and supranational level of workplace industrial relations is also emerging 'vertically'.