EU Framework for Information, Consultation and Participation rights

The EWC directive and the SE/SCE follow the aim to improve employee involvement rights in Community-scale companies. Whereas the EU directive on European works councils has played a pioneering role in the field of European legislation on information and consultation, the SE/SCE-directive introduced for the first time obligatory participation rights at board level. Both directives do not substitute national rights but supplement them by adding an additional transnational dimension to worker interest representation thereby reflecting the internationalisation of business.

Contrary to this, the Framework directive lays down a European standard of information and consultation rights in national companies. This is particularly relevant for countries (such as the UK and Ireland) where no such rules existed before. This minimum standard is complemented by specific rights in ‘exceptional circumstances affecting the workers to a considerable extent’: for example, collective redundancies (directive 98/59/EC) and transfers of undertakings (directive 2001/23/EC).

The existing directives are a clear expression of the willingness at European level to make employees citizens at their workplace. This is also mirrored in the EU Charter of Fundamental rights (integrated in the draft EU constitution) which gives information and consultation rights the status of a basic right of European citizens.

The European Union learns from its setbacks: exploitation of the loopholes in Community law, together with the deliberate misconceptions of national law on worker information and consultation on the part of companies such as Renault, have helped to persuade even those most reluctant to support the Community project of providing general protection for the fundamental right of workers to be informed and consulted.

European directive 2002/14/EC is the first in which the EU has extended to every Member State the obligation to provide a procedure for effective, ongoing and regular information and consultation for workers on recent and probable developments in the undertaking’s activities, financial and economic situation, the evolution of employment and in particular of decisions that might lead to major changes in the organisation of labour.