This article analyses the negotiations on worker involvement in the first almost four years of the SE and outcomes. First, some basic institutional aspects of the SE itself and its current empirical situation are described and explained. Then, the focus is on questions of employee involvement in this new legal form. Again some main institutional provisions on employee involvement are assessed, before a detailed empirical analysis on specific issues is presented. A final appraisal based on this assessment concludes the article. Key words: / Societas Europaea (SE), industrial relations in the EU, worker participation 1. Introduction The idea to create a European legal form for companies dates back to the early years of the Union. It took more than 30 years before it could be finalized. The Nice Summit in 2001 passed the Council Regulation on the Statute for a Company (EC/2157/2001) and the supplementing the Statute for a with regard to the involvement of employees (2001/86/EC). The (Societas Europaea, SE) was created and a long-lasting stalemate, that focused on the question how the employees' interests should be guaranteed in this new legal form, was solved (for an analysis of the historical processes Gold/Schwimbersky 2008). Until autumn 2004, the Directive had to be transposed into national law and since October 2004 companies are free to choose this additional legal form; of course, national ones continue to exist. Meanwhile, quite a few companies have already chosen the SE as their legal form. In this article, we will have a closer look on these first cases and especially on the processes of the negotiated forms of employee involvement. First of all, we describe and briefly discuss some basic institutional aspects of the SE itself and elaborate on the present empirical situation. This new legal form gains gradually in importance, especially in specific member states and for companies with certain characteristics. Then, we will come to our focus, the question of employee involvement. Again we first describe some main institutional provisions on employee involvement before we present our detailed empirical analysis. Some virulent problems are, probably not surprisingly, already laid down in these institutional preconditions. Finally, we come to an appraisal based on our assessment. The empirical base of our study is, on the one hand, the database. It is prepared by the SEEurope-Network of the Trade Union Institute in Brussels in Co-Operation with the German Hans-Bockler-Foundation (http://www.worker-participation.eu/european_company). It constitutes the most reliable source available in the field of this new legal form and is also used by the Commission. On the other hand, we also conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with representatives of both sides and had the unique opportunity of nonparticipant observation in some official meetings. In substantive regard we benefited from previous research on Works Councils (EWCs). 2. The legal form of the SE - brief institutional remarks and the present of the art 2.1 Institutional remarks An SE, whose seat must be located in one of the member states of the Economic Area (EEA) and can be transferred from one member state to another at any time once an SE was formed, may be established in four different ways. A necessary precondition for the establishment is a transnational element. Without such a cross-boarder factor, the establishment of an SE is - at least according to the Statute -not possible. Furthermore, each way of foundation can have, and this is of specific interest from our perspective, specific implications for employee involvement. There are, for example, different quotas for the application of the so-called standard rules of employee involvement according to the different forms (for details Kosder 2006). …