amount of meeting, the need for translation and interpretation in the meetings and much more. This negotiation results in an EWC agreement which forms the basis for all EWC functioning. History In 2005, the EU Commission issued a draft proposal to update the 1995 Directive, noting particularly that while 820 European Works Councils existed, that represented merely 36% of the enterprises falling within the scope of the directive and around 60% of employees. It also took the position that works councils as they stood were not ‘up to the task of playing their full role in anticipating and managing change and building up a genuine transnational dialogue between management and labour’. Since the first Directive on European Works Councils was adopted, over a 1000 EWCs have been created. According to estimations, they would cover an estimated amount of 19 million employees in the EEA. Most EWCs are established in companies from the metal, chemical and services industries. Geographically, most EWCs are established in companies headquartered in Germany, the US, France and the UK. According to the EWC Recast Directive, the implementation of the Directive was to be evaluated no later than 5 June 2016. This evaluation was however postponed to the end of 2016 and further postponed to 2017. In the meantime, several evaluation studies have been published from the ETUC, the Leuven University; and the ETUI. See also European company law Employee Involvement Directive 2001 References Labour law Works council European Union directives 2009 in Europe