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Since its introduction in October 2004, the number of SEs has increased steadily year by year. By end of March 2009 some 350 companies had been founded in the form of a Societas Europaea. However, this rather impressive total should not blind observers to the fact that many SEs do not conform to the standard definition, for they are, in their overwhelming majority, SEs without any employees (‘empty SEs’) and/or not even a specific business purpose (‘shell SEs’). This development represents a potential threat to worker involvement rights in an SE. In this regard, it has to be borne in mind that mechanisms for securing employee rights to information, consultation and participation are guaranteed only at the moment of founding of SEs. It is accordingly difficult to negotiate workers’ rights at a later point in time, when the company has recruited its employees. In this respect, the existing mechanisms of the SE Directive do not represent a sufficient guarantee. The Commission has in fact acknowledged this shortcoming in its recent communication on the revision of the SE.

At the time of writing, the ECDB (SE Factsheets) provides information on 383 established and 18 planned SE. Since the last update (April 2009) four companies have been established according to the Directive (‘normal’ companies): Sword Group SE (FR), Unibail-Rodamco SE (FR), MAN SE (GE) and E.ON Energy Trading SE (GE). The German companies kept their two-tier corporate governance structure.

Since introduction of the European Company Statute or Societas Europaea (SE) in October 2004, the number of European Companies has increased steadily, year by year, at almost exponential rates of growth. In February 2010, the ETUI’s “SE database“ exceeded, for the first time, the total of 500 active SEs. This rather impressive total should, however, not blind observers to the fact that many SEs do not conform to the standard definition, for they are, in their overwhelming majority, SEs without any employees (‘empty SEs’) and/or without even a specific business purpose (‘shelf SEs’). Only roughly one quarter of the total number of SEs are today considered “normal SEs” in the sense that they have both employees and business activities.