The frontiers within: why employee representatives fail to set up European works councils.

This article reviews results of a study conducted by the Technische Universität München into why the majority of German multinationals covered by the European Works Council (EWC) Directive (1994) continue not to take advantage of this legal provision. After providing a brief outline of the project's research design, the main part of the article considers reasons why employee representatives fail to set up an EWC. As will be shown, these reasons mainly concern (i) a knowledge deficit about the EWC Directive; (ii) a lack of transparency regarding company structure; and (iii) the perceived limited value of an EWC on the part of German works councillors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]