Golem Seminar Series – What, if anything, can a failed company law directive tell us about European integration and neoliberalism

In 1972, the Commission of the EC proposed the 5^th company law directive, an attempt to harmonise company board structures throughout member states according to a German-style system of co-determination, including board seats for worker representatives. The proposal was part of the Commission’s largely unsuccessful plan to institute a system of employee participation, or industrial democracy, throughout the EC. The 5^th Directive never became law, dying in Council negotiations in 1984, and the purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the debate over the proposal, and in particular its provisions on employee participation, using documents from the Commission’s archives. The paper traces the Commission’s initial confidence and tries to locate the moment, and the reasons, for the shift in momentum, arguing that we cannot make sense of the Commission’s failure without making sense of the economic conditions of the time.

Speaker: Niall Oshaughnessy

This event will be on a first-come first-served basis.