At their plenary session on Thursday 19 December, MEPs will be invited to confirm the mandate given on 3 December by the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs to the German rapporteur, Dennis Radtke (EPP), to enter into negotiations with the EU Council on the revision of the European Works Councils (EWC) Directive (see EUROPE 13537/19).
The number of signatures required to organise this vote and challenge the mandate has been reached. This request was made by the PfE and ECR groups, which, according to some sources, would like to weaken the text. In any case, European employers, represented by BusinessEurope, have been opposed from the outset to the revision of this 2009 instrument, which is intended, among other things, to improve the consultation rights of EWCs.
Under the European Parliament’s mandate, a strategic decision by a company could even be suspended until the EWC has been properly consulted and issued an opinion.
However, on 18 December, the EPP group in the European Parliament said it was confident that the German MEP’s mandate would be confirmed unchanged in this single vote, but some groups have already called on their MEPs to be present in large numbers at the vote to make sure of this. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)