European Works Councils-Negotiated Europeanisation
W. Lecher

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Negotiated Europeanisation is the final study in a three-volume series on European Works Councils by an international research group. The first two studies have already been published by Ashgate. The current study is rooted in an analysis of the establishment of EWCs under Articles 5 and 6 of the 1994 EWC Directive. This is now a mandatory procedure and completes the development of EWCs from bodies set up purely by voluntary negotiation to bodies set up within a binding statutory procedure. The study is based on cases of five (named) major European firms in a variety of industrial sectors. As well as a detailed consideration of how negotiations using the mandatory procedure took place, there are more general reflections on the 'quality' of the actors involved, the negotiating process and the outcomes. As well as their analytical value, these observations offer a number of practical pointers on the establishment of information and consultation arrangements internationally. The study also asks why EWCs have been set up in only one third of eligible companies and why the pace of establishing new EWCs slowed after the mandatory procedure came into force in September 1996. This part of the study is based upon a pan-European questionnaire and offers the first empirical findings on this issue. European Works Councils exemplify a new mode of regulation at the European level, not only within industrial relations but in the field of European integration more widely conceived - Europe as a multi-level system of governance within a framework of devolved subsidiarity. This study is of both academic and practical interest, particularly in view of the continuing process of change in this area, exemplified in new Directives on the European Company Statute and information and consultation at national level.