The European union and national legal systems

The subject of employee representation perhaps illustrates most clearly the EU’s effort to juggle both competitiveness and social cohesion at the same time. The Community first developed legislation in this area in the 1970s. This body of legislation stipulates that employee representatives must be informed of corporate plans in the event of the transfer of undertakings, collective redundancies and protection of workers in cases of insolvency. More recent developments in this field include the European Works Council Directive. The Community has supplemented this list of legally binding initiatives with a host of soft developments such as the Green Paper on corporate responsibility (CEC, 2001f ). The message from the Community is that ‘corporate responsibility’ is synonymous with competitive, modern production. It is quite clear that the Community sees mechanisms for employee representation as a boon, as the recent agreement on a national-level work council Directive indicates (CEC, 2001g). This chapter shows, however, that regardless of the amount of goodwill and support the Community provides in a policy