In September 2008 the Commission presented a Communication on the review of Council Directive 2001/86/EC of 8 October 2001 supplementing the Statute for a European company with regard to the involvement of employees (COM(2008)591 final).

Generally, the Commission agrees with the view taken by the European trade unions that, in fact, there is no reason to revise the SE directive because too little practical experience has been accumulated so far. However, the Commission has recognised a problem in the high number of SEs established without employees and, consequently, without any negotiations on employee involvement. Against this background, the Commission has stated its concern that many member states have not adopted measures to avoid misuse of the provision when transposing the Directive into national law. Furthermore, the Commission recalls that adoption of the Directive was the result of a delicate compromise that took more than 30 years of negotiations to achieve. The Commission will decide in light of a review of the SE Regulation, whether the SE directive should be reviewed.

In this context the Commission called for tenders for a ‘study of the operation and impacts of the Statute for a European Company” in 2008 (MARKT/2008/19/F). The contract for the study (for which also a consortium of three organisations applied, among them SEEurope network experts) was awarded to Ernst & Young.

Link to Download of Communication (all EU languages).