European Union – Employment. The Court of Justice of the European Union gave a preliminary ruling deciding, among other things that, art 1(1)(a) of Council Directive (EC) 98/59 should be interpreted as precluding national legislation that introduced the undertaking and not the establishment as the sole reference unit, where the effect of the application of that criterion was to preclude the information and consultation procedure provided for in arts 2 to 4 of that directive, when the dismissals in question would have been considered 'collective redundancies', under the definition in art 1(1)(a) of that directive, had the establishment been used as the reference unit.