In the last two years, there has been a dearth of legislative initiatives in the field of company law.1This may be attributed to several reasons. Whilst the company law harmonisation programme is now largely complete, the principle of subsidiarity has to some extent hampered moves toward further harmonisation. Disagreement still reigns over certain crucial issues such as employee participation in corporate management. Also, in the light of the objective to advance EMU, there has been a shift in the Community's priorities. The search for consensus continues in relation to the proposal for a thirteenth company law directive on take-overs and the proposed European Company Statute, although, currently, the national delegations seem to be closer to agreement in relation to the latter than in relation to the former.2