A Third Way : Regional Restructuring and the Societas Europaea

The Societas Europaea (SE) harmonized a minimum of company law and assigned employee representation to a supplementary negotiation process. Commentators predicted that it would introduce cross-border regulatory competition to the EU. Others suggested that companies would choose the SE over other national corporate forms, in order to moderate the requirements of mandatory employee representation. This paper reports case-study evidence to argue that companies are utilizing the form in a third, more significant way: to facilitate within-group restructurings that make regulation by a single supervisor possible. Their actions generate pressure for the unification of additional areas of law and the development of new regional regulatory systems. Empowering the SE would therefore lead to increased integration of corporate oversight within Europe