The meeting was organised by MEP Radtke as an unofficial hearing, which made it possible that the agenda did not have to be negotiated with other parties. Accordingly, MEP Radtke invited Isabelle Schömann (ETUC Confederal Secretary); Rebekah Smith (BusinessEurope); Ralf Scholten (a legal experts representing EWCs and works councils in Germany) as well as three EWC members (Markus Dieterich | Coca-Cola Europacific Partners; Claudiu Blejdea | Nokia; Salvatore Di Gaetano | Adient).

Whereas, the business side argued against changing anything in the legislation, all the other speakers highlighted the failings of the EWC Directive. For example, Salvatore Di Gaetano reported in detail has management achieved to postpone the creation of an EWC by years by simply not following up the employees’ request to do so. At a later stage management “proposed that the EWC should be informed and consulted solely on projects involving at least 5% of the total workforce in Europe. This would have left the Council completely powerless in a situation where 1500 employees were facing collective redundancy!” said an indignant Salvatore Di Gaetano. Since 2017 he struggles to get his hands on information which management doesn’t consider “of transnational character”.

“They have nothing to fear”, di Gaetano explained, “because the maximum fine faced by companies in Ireland that breach European Works Council laws would be 20,000 euros, and even this would apply only if legal action could be pursued through to the end”. Bettina Haller from the Siemens EWC confirmed the call for deterrent sanctions along with the need for courts to suspend companies’ decisions if the EWC wasn’t informed and consulted before. Dennis took up this call and stated that “access to justice and stronger sanctions will feature among the priorities of the own-initiative legal report”.

Other demands were brought forward by further EWC members. Petr Nesmerak (Bosch), for instance, emphasized the need to meet more than once a year. Further issues, such as the role of trade unions experts, access to justice (e.g. Nokia case) and the need to end so-called voluntary pre-Directive agreements.

We’re not looking for a package of new rights”, adds Dennis Radtke. “We simply want to ensure that companies abide by the law, and we want to bring unacceptable situations to an end, by allowing the EWC to be a legal entity in its own right, to gain access to the legal system and to secure sanctions that are genuinely effective. We must “make sure that the European Works Council, which at present is a ‘toothless tiger’, has a few sharp teeth to defend itself with”.