The Finance Committee or Economic Committee (German: Wirtschaftsausschuss) is a financial advisory body that analyses the financial situation in a company, in order to help the works council carry out its duties in a German legal entity.
The committee consisted of an equal number of members chosen by both the works council and the employer.
Initially, trade unions proposed a Finance Committee that had full co-determination rights, with decision making power on financial matters, but the employer reduced the scope of the committee to receiving information and limited consultation.
According to §118, if a company is primarily religious, charitable, educational, political or artistic in nature e.g German Red Cross or Max Planck Institute, then the Finance Committee is largely limited to financial planning during mass-layoffs as defined in §111-112.
[3]: 8 German legislators had a practical concern that if a committee becomes too large, the employer might be more reluctant to share financial information in full.