European Works Council or procedures for informing and consulting employees in Community-scale undertakings

The Committee adopted the draft recommendation by Mr Menrad (PPE, D) by proposing three important amendments: - Community-scale undertakings only had to employ 500 workers, instead of the 1,000 proposed by the Council, and 100 workers rather than 150 (Council proposal) in each of at least two different Member States; - the 3-year deadline for the opening of negotiations on the setting up of the Works Council was reduced to 18 months; - special provisions were introduced for undertakings with an "ideological objective", provided that these already existed in national legislation (as with the German Tendenzschutz legislation). At the conclusion of the vote, Chairman Hughes called on Commission Member Flynn to give his opinion on the amendments which the Committee had just adopted. The latter, having recalled that quite a few of Parliament's amendments were already contained in the text of the proposal, stated that he was going to support the three amendments in question when they came before the Commission. However, he expressed the reserve that if the Commission were to adopt them, it would have to be convinced that there was no risk of them jeopardizing the adoption of the text as currently proposed by the Council. �