The
Belgian Presidency of the European Union, represented within the conference by
Minister of Finance Didier Reynders, expressed his willingness to go ahead in
European PEPPER policies. Minister Reynders gave his support to the opinion
expressed by the European Federation of Employee Share Ownership (EFES) on the
next Communication of the European Commission 1.
The
governments of eleven European States 2 joined him to ask the European
Commission :
-
to
promote employee share ownership and participation, preferably to other forms of
financial participation of workers;
-
to
set up a permanent working party composed of representatives of both sides of
industry, employee owners organizations, members of the European Parliament,
experts of the Commission and representatives of the Member States;
-
to
implement a European programme with adequate funding;
-
to
create a European institute for employee share ownership and participation, to
promote exchanges of information and best practices;
-
to
develop training programmes on employee share ownership and participation;
-
to
adopt common principles and definitions (inter alia: employee share ownership on
a voluntary basis, and its accessibility to all employees and all types of
firms, including SMEs);
-
to
lift the transnational obstacles (tax, financial, social and cultural).
The
European Commission, represented by Mr Rosendo Gonzales-Dorrego, Director in the
Directorate-General Employment and Social Affairs, pointed out the initiatives
taken in the past, in particular PEPPER Reports and the consultation intended to
prepare the next Communication of the Commission.The consultation raised a hundred
reactions, among which the opinion of EFES and that of the European social
partners.It referred to the
difficulties within the Commission, due to fact that many Directorate-Generals
are interested in the initiatives related to employee share ownership (DG
Employment & Social Affairs, DG Enterprises, DG Internal Market, etc).
The
organizations of workers and the organizations of employers were represented by
ETUC – the European Trade Unions Confederation 3 and by UNICE – Union of
Industrials and Employer’s Confederations of Europe 4. Both supported the
development of employee share ownership while insisting on their own individual
approaches:ETUC insists on the
aspects of participation of the workers in general and in decision-making, and
on the distribution of income and wealth; UNICE stresses the voluntary aspect of
employee share ownership, and on its positive impact on motivation and
productivity.
This
is why the conference requires the lifting of tax and social security obstacles
from the Member States and the Council of Ministers of the
EU.
Then,
a series of major European firms of various sizes, countries and branches of
industry testified to their experiences and their practices in employee
ownership and participation 5. They also stressed the huge
difficulties, for the firms, to implement transnational employee share ownership
plans.
Eventually,
the companies’ representatives agreed on the importance of different collective
ownership and ownership representation forms, beside the individual forms, and
they supported the idea of creating a legislative framework for these collective
forms (association, trust, stiftung, co-operatives, etc).
2Belgium, France, United Kingdom, the
Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Czech
Republic.
3The
ETUC has in its membership 74 National Trade Union Confederations from a total
of 34 European countries, as well as 11 European industry federations, making a
total of 60 million members.
4UNICE is the voice of business in
Europe, having as members the 33 principal business
federations from 27 European countries, plus 6 federations as
observers.
Marc Mathieu Secretary General EFES - EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF EMPLOYEE
SHAREOWNERSHIP FEAS - FEDERATION EUROPEENNE DE L'ACTIONNARIAT
SALARIE Avenue Voltaire 135, B-1030 Brussels Tel/fax: +32 (0)2 242 64
30 E-mail: marc.mathieu@ping.be See our web site:
http://www.efesonline.org EFES'
objective is to act as the umbrella organization of employee owners and all
persons, companies, trade unions, experts, researchers, institutions looking to
promote employee ownership and participation in Europe.