The EU recently published draft amendments to its 2009 European Works Council (‘EWC’) Directive, to strengthen employee representation across Europe.
The EWC Directive applies to businesses with at least 1,000 employees in total within the EU and at least 150 employees in at least two EU countries.
Broadly speaking, an EWC is a form of cross-border EU staff association with broad information and consultation powers. It is similar to, but separate from, national and regional works council bodies that may be set up under the legislation of individual EU countries.
If a business is large enough for the EWC Directive to apply, either the employees/their representatives or the business’ central management can negotiate to establish an EWC.
The recent draft updates to the EWC Directive are expected to be finalised and come into force in the next few years. They will introduce long-awaited updates to the European law, including the following:
- Revoking the special exemption for some historic/legacy EWCs;
- Requiring businesses to strive for greater gender equality when negotiating to form an EWC, with women and men both represented by at least 40% of the EWC positions;
- Clarifying the remit of the EWC to consider ‘transnational’ matters, which will now be broadly defined to mean any measures a business is considering where the measures can reasonably be expected to affect workers in more than one relevant country (or where the measures can reasonably be expected to affect workers in one relevant country and other consequences of those measures can reasonably be expected to affect workers in another relevant country);
- Greater clarity on the EWC costs that will need to be borne by the business, such as for expert advice and training; and
- Tighter restrictions on when information given to the EWC can be deemed ‘confidential’ by the business.
If you have a business which is within the remit of the EWC Directive, it is important to understand how these changes are likely to impact your industrial relations landscape over the next few years.
We have a subject matter expert who can discuss EU industrial relations issues with you in every Littler EU office, as well as in the UK.
