Employee Financial Participation between EU soft law and national company law: the Italian case after Law No. 76/2025

The article examines Employee Financial Participation from a company-law perspective, focusing on its role as a governance mechanism capable of aligning employees’ interests with the long-term success of the undertaking. It argues EFP schemes should not be regarded as inherently beneficial or inherently detrimental to workers. Their legitimacy depends on the legal conditions under which they are introduced, notably voluntariness, additionality to wages, transparency, broad-based access, and collective and governance safeguards. Although the EU has not adopted binding rules in this field, European soft law has progressively crystallized a coherent set of regulatory principles capable of guiding national reforms and informing future harmonisation initiatives. Against that background, the Italian legal system is analysed as a revealing case study. While Italian law had long offered legal tools capable of supporting profit-sharing and employee share ownership, those techniques remained fragmented and insufficiently integrated into a coherent framework. Law No. 76 of 15 May 2025 marks a step forward in terms of systematization and policy visibility, but its contribution remains limited because it prioritises fiscal incentives over the institutional and governance dimensions of employee participation. The article concludes that EFP schemes should be encouraged as tools of stakeholder-oriented governance, but within a clearer European regulatory framework.