The European Public Limited-Liability Company (Employee Involvement) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2009

Decisions of the special negotiating body

16.—(1) Each member of the special negotiating body has one vote.

(2) The special negotiating body must take decisions by an absolute majority vote, except in those cases where paragraph (3) or regulation 17 provides otherwise.

(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;

(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.

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) Where the special negotiating body takes a decision under this regulation or under regulation 17—

(a) it must publish the details of the decision in such a manner as to bring the decision, so far as reasonably practicable, to the attention of the employees whom it represents, and

(b) such publication must 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 must pay for—

(a) any reasonable expenses of the functioning of the special negotiating body, and

(b) 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.