in English The topic of this thesis is the regulation of employees' right to transnational information and consultation within Community-scale undertakings or Community-scale Groups of undertakings. Firstly, the right to information and consultation at the national level and the forms of employees' representation in the Czech Republic are introduced. Then the thesis explains the respective European directives and describes relevant cases of the Court of Justice of the EU, followed by a detailed analysis of the Czech legislation in the Labour Code. The next chapter focuses on the German transposition of this regulation. Eventually, the last chapter is a research on the operation of active European Works Councils in practice in the European Union and in the Czech Republic. The purpose of the thesis is to provide a comprehensive overview of the regulation of information and consultation procedures at transnational level and to introduce its operation in practice.

No / This article analyses the establishment and subsequent meetings of the McDonald's European Works Council and raises a number of questions. Who is an `employee representative' for the purposes of the EU Directive? How are such representatives elected in practice and what roles do existing national sub-structures play? Can employee representatives adequately coordinate their roles in the absence of significant unionisation? The experience of the McDonald's EWC suggests that where workforces have low levels of unionisation and employers are opposed in principle to the prescribed arrangements, a non-union firm can frustrate even the limited aims of the Directive. Furthermore, legally underpinned national-level sub-structures, which are often assumed to make such European-level bodies accountable, may fail to do so in practice.