Les comités d'entreprise européens dans l'UE élargie, entre outil de gestion et levier syndical

This paper investigates the role played by European Work Council (EWC) in the context of the enlarged Europe. It is based on an empirical survey of eight French multinationals belonging to three industrial sectors (automotive, energy, food-processing), and present in three new member states (Hungary, Slovakia, Romania). Focusing on the strategies of employee representatives and top managers respectively engaged in the EWC, the case studies highlight the various ways in which, more or less strategically, actors use those new structures of transnational social dialogue. Differently according to firms, EWC appeared to be "structures of political interest". For employee representatives belonging to different EU territories, EWC could be an instrument for calling in favour of transnational regulations, or a tool for improving the low quality of local regulations, especially in the eastern-european subsidiaries. For the top management, EWC are not less strategic. Reinforcing in some rare cases the coordination of HR policies at a global level, those new structures are more often used by the directions for changing the terms and purposes of the social dialogue, in a way more adapted to the new managerial requirements.