European Works Councils (EWCs) is one of the four high priority issues, for which a statutory committee exists. President of the committee is Christer Larsson. The president of the statutory EWC committee is entitled to participate in EMCEF presidium meetings. In about 440 multinational companies operating in the sectors covered by EMCEF, EWCs could be set up. In almost 200 of them this is done. As such EMCEF coordinates trade union involvement in a quarter of the existing EWCs. Among the European Industry Federations, only the EMF coordinates a larger number of EWCs. Beyond these numbers, it is even more important to improve the quality of trade union coordination, because this determines our strength in responding to challenges appearing from trans-national restructuring within these multinationals. Since October 2005, Peter Kerckhofs joined EMCEF. To focus his EWC-work, he has drawn up an action plan on which progress reports are presented in a first section. Furthermore, he also undertakes actions in the wider field of Workers Participation and Lifelong Learning, like the participation to the ETUC working groups on those two matters. In a second section minutes of the meetings of the statutory EWC committee can be found. Thanks to the TRACE project two additional meetings of the committee can be held in Bad Munder, in the form of seminars to develop EWC guidelines. The results of this process will be presented to the statutory EWC committee on its 27 April meeting in Luxemburg. The second Luxemburg meeting of the committee is on 19 October. Because of the feedback on the location and the interpretation facilities there, alternative venues for committee meetings are considered for 2007.

EMCEF European Works Council Committee Political Secretary is (vacant) Assistant is Corinna Zierold Committee members [List] as approved by the Executive Committee meeting of 11 Feb 2010 President is Christer Larsson [Email] committee members

The network of trade union experts doing follow-up of EWCs as EMCEF coordinators, is crucial for trade union involvement and support of EWCs. An online database will give you the name and contact details of the EMCEF coordinator of the EWC requested in section three. A calendar of EWC meetings is provided in section four. Please notify any meeting you know of so that we can integrate it in the calendar. News on SNB negotiations and new agreements is given in section five, general information in section six and specific projects are presented in section seven. The refreshment of the EWC section of the EMCEF INTRANET has only just started now. Good ideas and remarks are always welcome.