The European Public Limited-Liability Company Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2004

Decisions of the special negotiating body

29.—(1) Each member of the special negotiating body shall have one vote.

(2) Subject to paragraph (3) and regulation 30, the special negotiating body shall take decisions by an absolute majority vote.

(3) In the following circumstances any decision which would result in a reduction of participation rights must be taken by a two thirds majority vote –

(a) where an SE is to be established by merger and at least 25% of the employees employed to work in the EEA states by the participating companies which are due to merge have participation rights; and

(b) where an SE is to be established by formation of a holding company or of a subsidiary company and at least 50% of the total number of employees employed to work in the EEA states by the participating companies have participation rights, and

in this paragraph, reduction of participation rights means that the body representative of the employees has participation rights in relation to a smaller proportion of members of the supervisory or administrative organs of the SE than the employees' representatives had in the participating company which gave participation rights in relation to the highest proportion of such members in that company.

(4) The special negotiating body must publish the details of any decision taken under this regulation or under regulation 30 in such a manner as to bring the decision, so far as reasonably practicable, to the attention of the employees whom it represents and such publication shall take place as soon as reasonably practicable and, in any event, no later than 14 days after the decision has been taken.

(5) For the purpose of negotiations, the special negotiating body may be assisted by experts of its choice.

(6) The participating company or companies shall pay for any reasonable expenses of the functioning of the special negotiating body and any reasonable expenses relating to the negotiations that are necessary to enable the special negotiating body to carry out its functions in an appropriate manner; but where the special negotiating body is assisted by more than one expert the participating company is not required to pay such expenses in respect of more than one of them.