Commission Says EU Inc Will be in Place by End of 2026

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Many activists and lobbyists had called for a European company register as part of EU Inc. Today's EU legislative proposal has indeed included one:

Today saw the official launch of the EU Inc or 28th Regime' legislative proposal by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, after it got its first outing at Davos in January. It includes the much requested European company register, despite earlier indications that this would be unwieldly and not be part of the proposal.

It can still take weeks or even months to set up a company or to start doing business in another country within the single market," von der Leyen said this morning in Brussels. Barriers inside Europe hurt us more than tariffs from the outside. Across our union, entrepreneurs who want to scale up are the first victims of regulatory fragmentation. Instead of one market, they face 27 legal systems and more than 60 national company forms. And the consequences are real."

The time and money spent filling paperwork is not spent on creating or innovating," she said. Obviously, this must change and fast. And so here comes EU Inc, the 28th regime."

The EU Inc movement had gathered steam since its launch back in 2024, and the announcement from von der Leyen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, was widely celebrated as progress. Now today it includes many of the elements for which the start-up community lobbied hard.

[...] At the heart of this proposal is one simple principle that says, once only'. Companies will provide their information to public authority, the data one time only, and that information will then be shared automatically between relevant administrations, from business registers to taxes to Social Security ... and this information will be stored and easily accessible in a new EU Business register for EU Inc companies."

[...] EU-INC, a movementwith more than 22,000 signatories that include the founders of Stripe and venture capital players from Sequioa to Index, had been running a policy campaign since October 2024 pushing for the creation of the so-called 28th regime, and in 2025 presented legal proposals to the Commission.

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