With a preface by Günther Verheugen, Vice-President of the European Commission

The discussion on employee financial participation at the European level resulted in several measures in the early 1990s, including:  

• the European Commission’s PEPPER I Report (Promotion of Employee Participation in Profits and Enterprise Results) in 1991;
• the Recommendation of the European Council of 27 July 1992, concerning the promotion of employee participation in profits and enterprise results;
• the Resolution of the European Parliament of 9 April 1992, concerning the proposal of the European Commission for the aforementioned recommendation of the European Council;
• the PEPPER II Report of 1997, which, despite these initiatives, found no major changes in national policies with respect to the promotion of employee financial participation schemes.

This assessment was extended to the new Member States and candidate countries in 2006 with the PEPPER III Report. 

The report revealed that in both the non-transition countries and the former socialist states, the few laws enabling forms of employee financial participation refer almost exclusively to employee share ownership. However, in the former socialist states employee financial participation is mainly linked to privatisation. There have been only a few cases of legislation on profit-sharing. The general attitude of governments and social partners is revealed in the lack of concrete measures supporting PEPPER schemes on the part of policy makers, and the limited interest shown both by trade unions and employers’ organisations.