EON SE: commentary of the agreement on employee participation in the new European company

On May 3, 2012, the annual shareholders’ meeting of the largest energy producer in Germany adopted the transformation of the legal status of the company.  Indeed, EON went from a German limited company (Aktiengesellschaft) to a European company (SE).  After this decision, a Special Negotiating Body (SNB) was set up to negotiate with the management about the structures and modalities of employee representation in the future SE.  Less than 6 months later (October 16, 2012), the agreement was signed.

Why change?  The group employs nearly 88,000 people in about 30 countries – 19 in the European Economic Area (EEA) – and used to have a EWC.  In the preamble, the management and SNB explained that they wanted to adopt the new status because they were convinced that “the company’s economic success was tightly linked with employee satisfaction,” and therefore “intensive dialogue between the management,…