197 pages
evolution 2006-2025
main findings of census 2025
more than 100 tables and graphs
democratization rate in various countries
list of all most remarkable companies
ordinary employees and top executives
employee representation on boards
discrimination in voting rights
ownership control
listed companies
employee-owned
non-listed
companies
and much more

An exhaustive picture based on the EFES database (the 3,100 European companies gathering 95% of employment in all European listed companies).

in partnership with

  
1. The paradigm shift in European employee share ownership gained further traction in 2025. As far as employee share ownership is concerned, the dynamic is shifting from large companies to SMEs. The context and objective are not so much to share profits as to meet the need for business succession. Great Britain is becoming Europe's number one, while the continent and France in particular, are fading into the background.

2. When it comes to employee share ownership in large European companies, the paradox is increasingly glaring. Everything indicates that companies want it. Everything indicates that employees want it too. Companies are increasing the number of employee share plans. In terms of value, records continue to be broken. 497 billion Euro held in 2025, or 45,000 Euro for the average employee shareholder.
Yet overall, the number of employee shareholders is falling, employee ownership stake is stagnating, and the democratisation of employee share ownership is crumbling. As a result, the plans are becoming less and less effective. The plans and policies behind them are becoming increasingly undemocratic.
On the positive side, an increasing number of large European companies are introducing employee share ownership plans and seeing a greater uptake in employee share ownership.

In 2025, 95% of large companies had some form of employee share ownership and 59% had democratic plans for all their employees.
 However, the number of employee shareholders has dropped to 6.5 million, still below the level of 6.9 million reached in 2011. The rate of democratisation of employee share ownership continues to fall. Today, only one employee in five is a shareholder in their company, compared with one in four previously. Finally, employee shareholding in large European companies has stopped growing. It represents 3.07% in 2025 versus 3.04% in 2013. 

3. A strong employee ownership movement is now taking hold in European SMEs, starting in Great Britain. In 2025, the UK was rapidly moving towards a situation where one in ten SMEs would be 100% employee-owned.
For employee share ownership worldwide, this marks a true revolution. In fact, for almost two hundred years, numerous frameworks and models have been tried and tested to develop employee ownership in SMEs. Today, for the first time in the world, we have succeeded in setting up a model that outperforms all others. Since 1974, the world's best-known model had been the ESOP plan in the United States. The Employee Ownership Trust formula introduced in the UK in 2014 now appears to be by far the most effective.

"Bravo pour ce rapport très clair et complet !"

"Wow, what a great work. Congratulations. That's very helpful for our activities!"

"Salve vi invio la mia tesi magistrale sull'azionariato dei dipendenti in Italia e vi ringrazio perché dal vostro lavoro ho potuto prendere spunti interessanti."

"Anyway thanks to you and your hard work, and your wonderful reports - I am an associate professor now, so thank you very much for your help. Now I am preparing this version in English, so I try to put the most recent data."

"That's really great work! Congratulations and thank you. I think the survey is very helpful for the discussion here in Germany. We will publish it on our homepage and distribute the paper in our network. Best wishes"

"Merci pour ce travail récurrent si précieux !"

"Remarkable work ! Thanks and congratulation".

"Nous sommes en phase de finalisation du texte concernant une saisine au CESE en France. Votre publication pourrait nous être fort utile."

"Muchas gracias por la información y felicitaciones..."

"I would be very eager to update my analysis based on new data."

"Can you provide data on individual companies, e.g. in an excel spread sheet, so we can see which companies have stock options? This would be very useful for our statistical analysis."

"Sans votre soutien précieux, en m'aidant à constituer la base de données statistiques ayant permis la réalisation des deux études quantitatives longitudinales de l'impact de l'actionnariat salarié sur la performance des grandes entreprises françaises cotées, ma thèse n'aurait pas pu voir le jour."