Mr. Tom Hayes:

I will give a couple of quick statistics. It is estimated there are probably around 2,200 companies within the overall scope of the European works council directive. Of that, about 14,000 already have a European works council. The reason the others do not is that they have not been asked by their employees to set one up. The numbers vary. We estimate there is 200 to 250 American companies that are within scope because of the number of employees they have in Europe. We think there is approximately 160 UK companies that have a European works council. The other big numbers can be found in three countries, namely, France, Germany and the Netherlands. There is a handful of EWCs in Spain, Italy and so on.

European works councils have a European focus. They are not domestically focused. They are about transnational issues,affecting the whole of the European workforce and not simply the workforce in an individual county. As I said in my opening remarks, a company is supposed to set up its European works council based on its domestic law - Volkswagen in Germany, and so on. So in the UK for instance, a company like HSBC or Rolls-Royce would have used UK law.

Such a company cannot use that law any more. I do not know if, for instance, HSBC, the big bank, has brought any money with it, but it has moved to Ireland. It is a European rather than a domestic focus. I think that that is the way Mr. Sheridan would see it.