text: These differing traditions of worker involvement have held back the adoption of the statute for over a decade. States without worker involvement provisions were afraid that the SE might lead to having such provisions being imposed on their companies; and states with those provisions were afraid they might lead to those provisions being circumvented.
  A compromise, contained in the directive, was worked out as follows: worker involvement provisions in the SE will be decided upon by negotiations between employees and management before the creation of the SE. If agreement cannot be reached, provisions contained in the directive will apply. The directive provides for worker involvement in the SE if a minimum percentage of employees from the entities coming together to form the SE enjoyed worker involvement provisions. The directive permits member states to not implement these default worker involvement provisions in their national law, but then an SE cannot be created in that member state if the provisions in the directive would apply and negotiations between workers and management are unsuccessful.
  Definition
  Definition of employee participation: it does not mean participation in day-to-day decisions, which are a matter for the management, but participation in the supervision and strategic development of the company.
  Participation
  If the two parties do not reach a satisfactory arrangement, a set of standard principles set out in the annex to the directive becomes applicable.