EU rights | The European Union remains stuck in old dogmas

Innovative technologies and digitalization must not undermine co-determination and social protection rights. Photo: dpa/Christian Charisius A uniform European corporate law makes sense: it can simplify cross-border investments and provide innovative companies with better starting conditions. Most experts agree on this. In contrast to the other wave of deregulation from Brussels, bureaucracy could be reduced in a meaningful way and a crucial promise of the EU could be fulfilled - the overcoming of 27 fragmented national legal systems. However, if the EU Commission pushes through with its plans for a 28th regime as planned, this could have fatal consequences for employees as well as for the Union itself. That is why the cornerstones that the Parliamentary Employment Committee has now decided on must be implemented.

But even these protective clauses do not go far enough. Because harmonized corporate law must be accompanied by uniform European standards for co-determination, collective bargaining, taxes and the right to strike. Here, however, the member states and the Commission continue to stick to old dogmas and are foreseeably passing on entrepreneurial risks to employees. This imbalance leads to a dangerous drifting apart between entrepreneurial freedom and social rights in a labor market that is already being fundamentally transformed by digitalization.

This can have a fatal effect, especially against the background of economic crises, resurgent nationalism and the rise of anti-European parties. If the internal market is further deepened without equally securing the social foundation, there is a risk of further destabilization of the EU. In order to remain viable for the future and keep the idea of ​​a supranational political community alive, the European Union must urgently rethink, discard outdated dogmas and finally anchor co-determination as well as social and labor rights as equal pillars.

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