The dynamics of worker participation in European Societies in Luxembourg.

Since transposing Directive 2157/2001 into national company law1 in 2006, Luxembourg has fi gured prominently among those EU Member States with the highest number of European Companies (SE). Current available data point towards continuing dynamism with regard to SE set-ups and company seat transfers to and from Luxembourg in line with SE legal provisions. SEs have been established in all the pivotal economic sectors (fi nance, insurance, health, chemicals) of the country, which reflects developments in other EU countries (Rehfeldt et al. 2011: 29). Their number has increased in tandem with the number of companies opting for long-established business formats (STATEC 2011: 298) such as the société anonyme or the société à responsabilité limitée (SA and SARL). Recent SEs have also emerged in sectors which have been developed only more recently (marketing, communications). Small in size and ignored by the literature on industrial relations in Luxembourg in terms of worker rights, SEs have only had a modest impact on job creation despite the fact that SE provisions in national labour law, as this chapter will suggest, have impacted positively on the development of worker participation rights by integrating the related Directive 86/CE/2001 into worker participation law. The legal framework on worker participation, contextualised through laws passed in the 1970s on intra-company worker involvement and in 2004 on general collective bargaining and trade union representativeness, has remained unaltered. The Labour Code of 2006 includes all existing labour law provisions.2 Abolishing distinctions between bluecollar and white-collar workers in the private sector by introducing a single status in 20083 put an end to distinctions in the context of European Work Council law (Seifert 2011). It is therefore not surprising that legal provisions for SEs on trade union involvement, election procedures, government monitoring and information sharing by the management and their employees have come to be embedded in a long tradition of social dialogue at the company and national levels. When transposing SE provisions, it was acknowledged in accordance with objectives put forward by the European Union that a new legal business entity has the potential to attract foreign capital, generate new revenues and constitute an incentive for new market opportunities for resident companies at the transnational level (Streeck and Vitols 1995; Gold and Schwimbersky 2008). New SE Directive-based national business provisions were introduced to adapt and complement the commercial law of 1915 to better accommodate company mobility within Europe's growing internal market. This contribution analyses the dynamics of worker participation in the European Company in Luxembourg. Section 2 situates SE legislation within the national legal landscape. Sections 3 and 4 provide a general overview of SEs in Luxembourg and identify research and information gaps. The fi nal section identifi es potential negative and positive drivers behind the implementation of SEs in Luxembourg. The research draws on fi ndings from governmental and social partners' position papers, interviews with stakeholders and an analysis of 9 out of a total of 25 Luxembourg-registered (August 2012) European companies.