The authors of this volume build upon the 2003 report of the European Parliament on asset formation, which called on the Commission to launch an initiative to promote Financial Participation of Employees. This book embraces all aspects and forms of Financial Participation. It promotes A European Platform for Financial Participation, providing a summary of the development of employee financial participation in the EU 27. This book offers an overview of the situation across the Member and Candidate countries as of 2007, and a proposal for a European policy, for example, the 'Building Block Approach', which draws upon the experience of employee financial participation in Western Europe as it relates to the European integration process. This book includes an outline of functional changes in property rights in Europe and reports on the legal framework for implementation of financial participation at a supranational level including tax incentives and a systematic overview of financial participation. It further presents the U.S. Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) as an example of an advanced model. For the first time, comparable empirical evidence of employee financial participation in the EU member and candidate countries is made available.