A new note from the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) research centre, published on Friday 12 September, warned “of the serious risks to the European social model and workers’ rights arising from the European Commission’s plan for a 28th regime”, confirmed by the institution’s President, Ursula von der Leyen, in her State of the Union address.
The President has relaunched the idea of creating a European legal framework for what they call ‘innovative’ companies, such as start-ups and scale-ups (see EUROPE 13677/36).
The ETUI considers the proposal “unnecessary and potentially harmful, citing possible spillover effects on labour law, taxation and social security protection”.
A new form of European company “would expose Member States to a more flexible European regime, opening the door to social dumping (lowering labour standards to cut costs) and ‘forum shopping’ (selecting the most lenient jurisdiction)”, according to ETUI.
The 28th regime would also “inevitably affect labour law, taxation, social security and insolvency rules, undermining hard-won safeguards”.
The experience of the European Company (SE) already shows how pan-European company forms can be exploited to circumvent worker participation and national labour standards. ETUI does not consider the proposal to be absolutely necessary.
“The recent European directives on cross-border company mobility and digitisation already provide a modern, harmonised framework for start-ups and scale-ups”.
Link to the study: https://aeur.eu/f/ieg (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)