The Euro-Company: Focal Point for the Europeanization of Industrial Relations?

Abstract

Singling out European-scale multinational companies for particular attention needs little justification in the light of previous chapters. MNCs have been key proponents of economic integration, championing the creation of the single European market and subsequent monetary union (Nollert, 2000). MNCs are also central protagonists driving forward the process of market integration. As Chapter 2 underlined, large companies have responded to EMU by seeking to extend their reach from particular national markets across the entire single market, and to reorganize production and market servicing on a continent-wide basis. In the process the number of companies within the EU which are multinational in scope has grown as has the geographical reach of established MNCs (Edwards, 1999). Chapter 2 went on to establish that the ‘Euro-company’ is a meaningful concept, distinct from the ‘global’ corporation and amounting to more than an umbrella term for a set of nationally differentiated MNCs. Legal accommodation to the scale and significance of these developments has come with the eventual adoption, in 2001, of the European Company Statute.