4 - France

Summary

Introduction

1. The Regulation and the Directive have been implemented in France by the law of 26 July 2005 on the promotion of confidence and economic modernisation (the ‘Law’).

As the Regulation is directly applicable in France, France only enacted a limited number of provisions implementing certain options contained in the Regulation in order to ensure consistency with French company law.

Thus, fifteen articles (Arts. L.229-1 to L.229-15) were inserted in a new Chapter IX on the SE (De la société européenne) in Title II of Book II of the French Commercial Code (the ‘Commercial Code’) and a new Chapter IV bis was added to Title IV on the violation of rules applicable to the SE (Des infractions concernant les sociétés européennes).

The Directive, on the other hand, had to be transposed into French law. Thus, a new Chapter XI was added to Title III of Book IV of the French Labour Code on employee involvement in the SE and on the SE's works council (Implication des salariés dans la société européenne et comité de la société européenne).

The general provisions of the Law are supplemented by Decree No. 2006-448 of 14 April 2006 and Decree No. 67-236 of 23 March 1967 on commercial companies, as well as by the decree of May 30 1984 on the French trade register and Decree No. 2006-1360 of 9 November 2006 on employee involvement in the SE.