Renault: a new amendment to the agreement on the vehicle manufacturer’s EWC provides for a new SNB that will increase the EWC’s legitimacy

The amendment from March 24, 2015 aligns Renault’s 1995 voluntary agreement in anticipation of the implementation of the EWC and its subsequent various modifications with the requirements of the 2009 recast directive. A major new addition is Renault’s commitment to establish a special negotiation body (SNB) that will be explicitly governed by the new directive and whose role is to negotiate a new agreement. On the basis of the existing acquis, the social partners want to give back a degree of legitimacy to a body that was put in place 20 years ago by a French Group that has dramatically changed since then. The social partners agree that its is appropriate to establish an SNB in respect of current French legal provisions so as to start negotiations on the much modified May 05, 1995 agreement. The objective of the exercise is to arrive at an agreement before the Group’s 2016 plenary session.