At the Nice Summit in December 2000, after more than 30 years of controversial debate, the Council of Ministers agreed on the European Company Statute (Societas Europaea = SE). In this context two legal instruments were enacted, the council regulation (No. 2157/2001) on the Statute for a European Company, which rules the internal corporate governance structure of the SE, and the council directive (2001/86/EC) supplementing the Statute for a European Company with regard to the involvement of employees on the company level, which emphasises voluntary negotiations between employees' representatives, a so-called special negotiating body, and the management. In October 2004, the SE can be established by companies based in the EU and the EEA for the first time. The legal form of the SE provides companies all-over Europe extensive opportunities for structural adjustments in accordance with their organisational needs. However, it does not only have substantial impacts on the companies capacity to act but also on the member states. Actually, the introduction of this new form of enterprise is expected to put considerable pressure on the national corporate governance systems as well as on the national fiscal systems. Additionally, the paradigm shift of the Community is remarkable regarding co-determination. This means, the Community does not try to establish a specific institutional pattern anymore, but pushes procedures that promote the idea of worker participation in management's decisions. The paper gives a brief overview of the emergence of the SE. Then, the contents of the regulation and the directive are presented. Subsequently, the focus of the paper is on the impacts on co-determination taking into consideration exemplarily the great variety of forms of worker participation currently prevalent in the EU and the EEA.