Introduction

1. Over the decade or so that Iceland has been a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), Icelandic company lawhas been amended on numerous occasions to bring it into line with Community law.

In the explanatory memorandum to a bill amending Icelandic company law, later adopted by the Althing as Act No. 2/1995 on public limited companies, reference was made to a proposal for a Community regulation on a European company as well as to a proposed directive on employee involvement in such a company. The proposed regulation was intended to simplify and make possible the merger and establishment of holding companies and joint ventures by companies from different Member States. The proposed directive outlined three different ways to guarantee employee involvement in the new European company. The explanatory memorandum stated that although Icelandic law did not (yet) contain any provisions on employee involvement, Iceland should be able to choose one of the three methods described in the proposed directive, if the other EFTA countries and the EU Member States were able to do so. Many organisations and entities were asked to comment on the bill and their comments were submitted to the Althing. However, no particular questions were raised regarding the Statute for a European company (SE).

2. Pursuant to a resolution dated 13 December 2002, the Althing authorised the government to adopt two EEA joint committee decisions integrating into the EEA Agreement Council Regulation (EC) No. 2157/2001 of 8 October 2001 on the Statute for a European company (SE) (the ‘Regulation’) and Council Directive 2001/86/EC of 8 October 2001 supplementing the Statute for a European company with regard to the involvement of employees (the ‘Directive’).