The Government has withdrawn some of its objections to a proposed directive that would require companies seeking PLC (public limited company) status at EU level to have structures to represent employees.
Such a provision could lead to union recognition.
The change in the Government's stance is being seen as an attempt to avoid criticism that it is blocking trade union representation at European level in order to placate anti-union companies, both indigenous and US-owned. The issue is expected to be raised at the Dublin regional conference of SIPTU, which opens this evening in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin and which is to be addressed by the Labour Party leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn.
The proposed EU directive on a European company statute aims to allow companies to establish themselves as a European PLC and thus cut through the layers of red tape that currently require them to register in every EU member-state where they wish to operate. A breakthrough on a draft statute is expected at a Council of Ministers' meeting later this month and the confederate secretary of the European Trade Union Congress, Mr Willy Buschak, said yesterday that he believed it could be law by the end of the year. Mr Buschak was critical of Ireland's opposition to structures to represent employees, but said that its revised position represented a significant step forward.
The Government is now proposing that companies should be allowed to register as European PLCs so long as they comply with the statutory requirements in the countries where they operate.
It argues that this would allow indigenous Irish companies to become European PLCs without having to take on board the elaborate commitments in areas like employee representation, participation rights and information that apply to their counterparts in states such as Austria, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.