Employee share ownership was championed in Brussels on February 6 when Renate Weber MEP, newsbrief interviewee, held a conference with delegates from across the EU. The UK was represented by Centre members Inna Baranbaeva (Computershare) and Phil Ainsley (Equiniti).

"Employee share ownership for all" has been a European policy goal for 30 years. In today’s Europe there are 10 million employee shareholders-that number would need to multiply six fold to make European employee ownership comparable with the US. A European Action Plan was requested by the European Council in 2000, announced by the Commission in 2002, prepared by a Pilot Project in 2014, and reaffirmed through the European Parliament’s Resolution of October 23 2018: it has now to be put in place. 

Employee ownership helps achieve UN 2020 sustainable development goals. Just over three years ago, the UN launched its Sustainable Development Goals to push world leaders into addressing problems such as poverty, hunger and climate change by 2030. These days those SDGs have become a useful framework for discussing global development across both the private and public sector. On January 24 the Centre gave a keynote at the European trade union confederation in Brussels focusing on goal 10, reducing inequality. The Centre made the case for employee financial participation as a key method of reducing inequality by sharing the wages of capital. The Centre is inviting international members to join a working group with its European allies ProEFP, many of whom have worked towards without making the Goal 10/efp link. The work of multinational Centre members such as Deloitte which helped brief the Centre was featured in Brussels.

Standard Ethics, an independent sustainability reporting rating agency, supports the Centre's efforts to achieve goal 10 through employee share ownership. As reported in our June edition of Newspad, Standard Ethics Ratings were recently issued to Europe’s one hundred largest listed companies. These companies will be the components of the SE European 100 Index. It will be reviewed on a semi-annual basis in June and December. Index constituents have been selected according to their dimension, in terms of market capitalisation. The Standard Ethics Rating® (SER) is designed to be standard and comparable and to provide an independent opinion on where the company under evaluation stands in relation to Sustainability indications and guidelines emanating from the EU, OECD and UN.

Excerpts from January Newsbrief and June Newspad