instances pronounced, influence on the structure and functioning of EWCs of
factors which transcend national borders. It thereby demonstrates that the con-
cept of the Eurocompany can purposefully be applied within industrial relations.
In its conclusion, the chapter asks whether EWCs are likely to provide a
focal point for further developments in European industrial relations, espe-
cially collective bargaining.
2 THE EUROCOMPANY DIFFERENTIATED FROM WIDER,
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS
The structures and institutions of the EU are creating an economic, political and
regulatory space whose character and dynamic are distinctive when set against
wider, global, developments or those in the other global regions. ‘Political insti-
tutions have been created which have a capacity to control the process of inter-
national economic integration that is greater than in any other region, for
example North America’ (Martin, 1996: 6). The economic nature of the political
project underlying the construction and enlargement of the EU is well estab-
lished. From the mid-1980s, the programme to create the single market by the
end of 1992 was expressly aimed at promoting the rationalization and restruc-
turing of European industry, so as to enhance its competitive position in global
markets. Further impetus is given to these processes by the dynamics of the
Economic and Monetary Union, launched in 1999: encouraging companies to
organize their production and their market servicing on a continental basis.
Paradoxically, the emergence of Europe as a distinct economic zone is underlined
by the extent to which international companies based outside Europe, concerned
to consolidate their presence within a key global market, have also been players
in the twin processes of restructuring and rationalization within the EU (Ramsay,
1995). In addition, the European Commission has pursued industrial policies to
facilitate the restructuring of particular industrial sectors, such as steel, and com-
petition policies aimed at opening up previously closed markets to European-
wide competition, as in energy, telecommunications and airlines.
The distinctiveness of a European economic space within the global econ-
omy is sharpened by parallel developments in the other advanced industrial-
ized regions (Dicken, 1998). More recent and less far-reaching than the EU,
NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area) currently embraces the economies of
North America; enlargement into Latin America is foreseen. Although as yet
only in the process of establishing a free trade area, AFTA (ASEAN Free Trade
Area) groups the industrialized and industrializing economies of east and
south-east Asia. The result is the emergence of a tri-polar international econ-
omy, the ‘Triad’, comprising Europe, North America and Japan and its eco-
nomic satellites, in which economic exchanges (amongst the countries) within
The Eurocompany and European Works Councils 459