- What do you consider as the key findings of your empirical research?
Torsten Müller. Two key findings can be highlighted. First, as regards formal European company-level agreements, we found that between 12-15% of the over 300 companies that have European works councils in the metalworking industry have concluded formal agreements. This more or less confirms the findings of official lists drawn up, for instance, by the European Commission. We found some additional cases that have not been reported in official lists but not to the extent that would call into question the representativeness of existing official lists.
The second key finding is that based on our sample we can say that in approximately the same amount of cases (12-15%), informal arrangements have been agreed between European works councils and European central management.