This chapter aims at assessing the operation of European Work Councils (EWCs)-established by Council Directive 94/45/EC, 22.09.94-as well as examining the participation of Portuguese trade union organisations in the process. In the first part, EWCs are theoretically situated within the plural framework of emancipatory options facing European trade unions. The second part includes a review of both the main virtues of the EWCs (those which concur to set up a European industrial relations system) and its less acceptable aspects (those requiring the revision of some of the Directive's contents). In the third part a more extended discussion of the "Portuguese learning" experience is presented. On the one hand, the positions of the main Portuguese union federations are examined. On the other hand, five obstacles to the establishment and operation of EWCs involving Portuguese representatives are analysed in detail: the choice of representatives for the EWC; the competitive logic of trade union action; the weak culture of participation at company level; the utilitarian significance given the EWCs; the delay in transposing the Directive into Portuguese Law. It is argued that the capacity to identify these obstacles is the basic condition to overcome them and thereby attain social emancipation.