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Hacker News Hacker NewsI think that EU-Inc _could_ be an improvement, but it needs to avoid the committee laundry list of ideas/requirements/form fields that plagues the EU startup ecosystem. My worry is that the end result will require notarized declarations of honour, financial plans stretching decades into the future, 30 page business plan documents, reams of corporate governance documents, and tons of other nonsense to protect against the perceived risk that someone who failed at starting a business once fails a second time.
There needs to be UX requirements on the process from day one against which the end result is judged. (E.g. "a company should be able to register in x days", "a complete application should be no longer than y pages", "application costs should be less than z euros").
The reason this "28th regime" actually works—and bypasses the previous vetos — is that it’s optional. It doesn’t try to force Germany to change its local GmbH laws or kill the notary system overnight. Instead, it creates a parallel, voluntary path. Berlin doesn't have to give up its red tape for local shops, but they have to let a "Unified European Company" exist alongside them.
If we let national pride or local bureaucracy stop this again, we are essentially telling our best founders to leave for the US. Let’s stop protecting red tape and start protecting our future.
The whole process including banks accounts etc... can apparently take months in total.
Personally I would not create "EU-INC" but just make all local entities legal in every country. Then countries could compete to be the best system to attract companies and entrepreneurs.
You'd be surprised at some of the weird things that can happen in the current systems in the EU if you try to do business across borders.
Like: your company suddenly automatically becoming deregistered, or you might get a sudden huge tax bill, or you might even inadvertently get charged with fraud.
Hasn't happened so far knock on wood, but it's a lot more work to stay on the light side than you'd really like.
This is all because the national systems still sort of assume that you'll live and work and stay inside one EU country. You end up constantly fitting square administrative pegs into regulatory round holes.
A lot of the EU's promise is actually theoretical without a proper pan european legal entity.
In the ToS it states: >These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California
> Which brings me to the second focus – investment and capital. We are now building the Savings and Investment Union. We need a large-scale, deep and liquid capital market that attracts a wide range of investors. This will allow businesses to find the funding they need – including equity – at lower cost here in Europe. We have made proposals on market integration and supervision to ensure our financial market is more integrated. This covers trading, post-trading, and asset management – as well as driving innovation and making our supervisory framework more efficient. This will help ensure that capital flows where it is needed – to scaleups, to SMEs, to innovation, to industry.
> Third priority: building an interconnected and affordable energy market – a true energy union. Energy is a chokepoint – for both companies and households. Just look at the dispersion of prices across European electricity hubs. Europe needs an energy blueprint that pulls together all the parts. This is our Affordable Energy Action Plan. For example, we are investing massively in our energy security and independence, with interconnectors and grids – this is for the homegrown energies that we are trying to promote as much as possible, nuclear and renewables. To bring down prices and cut dependencies. To put an end to price volatility, manipulation and supply shock. But we now need to speed up this transition. Because homegrown, reliable, resilient and cheaper energy will drive our economic growth, deliver for Europeans and secure our independence.
But here is a problem: If your clients are in Croatia and you have a Croatian company, you don’t have to charge VAT if you earn under 60k per year. But if your company is in Estonia, you are required to charge VAT even if you earn under 60k.
But hopefully we can move towards that - standardised taxation (especially VAT and corporation tax would help massively here), the abolition of notaries, standardised requirements for document certification, and EU-wide digital ID so no need to fly in and sign in person.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/da/speech... https://tech.eu/2026/01/20/the-european-commission-launches-...
We paid 3K on a 50K plot of land for some dingus to read a contract out loud.
It should be equally simple to shut down a small company, once all its dues are paid.
Once a company grows larger (say, past 15 full-time employees, or past €10M in revenue), maybe something additional might be asked, because now the company would be able to afford handling it.
And, of course, sensitive things like selling food or medicines would require extra licensing, but it's not that the lack of bakeries or pharmacies what's holding back the tech industry progress in the EU.
How would this organization address that fundamental psychological block?
The second point is dubious. A central registry may be better or worse than the best national registry.
The third and fourth are what is usually called the Capital Markets Union in eurobubble speak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Markets_Union
The Draghi report had some specific proposals which are rather realistic:
> Reduce capital market fragmentation > > A. Introduce a European Security Exchange Commission > > B. Reduce regulatory fragmentation to deepen the CMU > > C. Encourage retail investors through the offer of second pillar pension schemes where the successful examples of some EU Member States can be replicated. > > D. Assess whether further changes to the capital requirements under Solvency II are warranted by further reducing the capital charges on equity investments held for the long term.
https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3...
https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/ec1409c1-d4b4... (p. 292)
Even now with cross-border selling, there are 27 different VAT codes to follow when transacting within Europe. Sure, you can report and actually settle it to a single national authority (and then that national process separately).
Unless a country will actually defer parts of its company and tax law to Brussels, for companies present in that country - then I just don't really see what this brings over just starting a limited company in another state (even outside of the EU) - as you'll still have to follow national law in the country where you're resident anyway, which could be anything.
(e.g. I start an Estonian OU with E residency, I live in Finland. I am obliged under Finnish law to submit a return for that company in Finland too as a person of control. In Finnish, along with the Estonian return, in Estonian)
As someone who lives in EU, been skeptical of it for most my life, but for the last 3-4 years kind of turned around on the idea of a stronger EU and more independent Europe, I'm really glad to see and hear that things are swiftly moving ahead. Things like this may seem relatively small, especially with everything going around, but these sort of partnerships and agreements really do have a large impact on the next decades, and I hope we'll see more of this. Fair trade is something we've taken for granted, but we've again learned that it's something you have to fight for, and I'm happy to live in the EU who seem to still realize it's important.
TBH I doubt it's going to be possible with current status. Where will an EU-inc be based, Luxembourg? and how would that be different from any other Lux company.
But maybe we could at least have some business standards that will be enforced all over the EU. It says "Local taxes & employment" , which also means local laws, which means 27 laws for every little thing. I thought they were going to address that
[1] https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/ [2] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house
For one, I'm worried about what simple means. Likely something that will not make it as cheap to operate in every EU country, but make it as expensive to do that.
Also, whatever the EU commission/council/whatever they call themselves in order to not call themselves government decides has to be translated into local legislation by all member countries. So it will get twisted in 27 different ways, some of them incompatible. Also 9 of the 27 will take years to finish the process.
Just heard about this initiative as a European, I don't have an opinion yet.
I hope this succeeds and also hopefully allows easy creation of EU company from outside EU as well.
Atleast personally I am interested in creating a EU company which holds Indian company instead of vice versa because as I said on other comments, I think I deeply align with EU privacy laws & usually most of EU in general.
Currently someone messaged on my other comment and the best way which is estonia would cost me around 1500 euros or more which is just a no go for me personally right now.
I have only read it from top of the page but if I may ask, can someone tell if does this benefit my use case?
Already being discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703877
I hope this is an indication that the Commission proposal will be for a Regulation and not a Directive.
I still don't understand why it's been such a contentious decision to pick between the two.
Local taxes & employment
I guess there is hardly any incentive to open a company in, say, Sweden vs Ireland then?
US tech companies won not because EU is diverse, but because they had access to more money and could undermine all competition by dumping prices.
Even before Google, there was Microsoft and it's tacit acceptance of "piracy".
I haven't looked too deeply into it, but my understanding is that it's not possible to create an equivalent corporation in Italy (where I reside) nor the rest of Europe.
I would love to be proven wrong though.
We also need a paneuropean banking & tax system and ideally some paneuropean telephony (plus voip) and internet providers.
Tell him Victoria refer you
What's really difficult is setting up a compnay and opening a bank account in the company's name from abroad.
Having a EU based one will be great.
In practice ... there is always so much bureaucracy and inertia. I don't think the current EU model works well. I also don't think a copy/paste USA 2.0 works either, yet this seems to be the primary objective by the people in Brussels (that is, = politicians, not all folks in Brussels of course). There is such a huge disconnect between what people such as Leyen babble, and what people want or need or may want. And a lack of decision-making power too. So I think most of those projects will end in failure.
Personally I think an EU model will only work when the agendas are NOT unified, because unification leads to disagreements. You can already see this happening in regards to politics or war - some countries want to, oddly enough, serve Russia. That may be a fine decision for a state, but if other states push for another approach, you have a problem here. Now there are discussions to simply isolate the "non-compliant" states, but this is a bad approach since it will again lead to fragmentation and more people being angry at Brussels here. So this is a failing model. Splitting up things into separate aspects will also, of course, lead to more bureaucracy, but states would more easily form a specific opinion and align towards that, without being handicapped by other states that don't want to go that route. I don't see any other way for this to work. The EU in its present form is just setup for failure - the current model simply does not work, and the proposed new model is even worse in many ways e. g. 2/3 majority basically means that the big states will dominate the small ones. For instance, if Germany and France want to go to war against Russia (let's assume this were the case), then they'd have to send troops to the front - and they are unwilling to do so. So other states are more likely to be threatened. That model not only does not work but is also unfair.
Of course legal or taxation models are different to war, but the different countries have different wealth and opportunities, so a one-size-fits-all also can not possibly work. We saw this with the EURO where weaker countries struggle permanently. The whole EU needs to be completely re-designed - and this is not going to happen due to inertia alone.
Completely and totally defeats the purpose.
Probably in just 3 to 5 years they could open a working group to outline an agenda for a committee which would prepare blueprints of the primary proposals.
Now, that may not work in all jurisdictions for reasons of local taxation etc (and you'll have to work out payroll tax, benefits etc) but that's almost never anything to do with the legal entity type!
The leeches and bureaucrats don't care about actually accomplishing things, about ending corruption, or fixing any of the real world problems experienced by the citizens of the EU. They just want their grift to continue, to feel morally and intellectually superior, and to feel the validation of exercising power over their subjugates. Because they know better, and their education is superior, and if everyone would just listen to the experts, the whole world would just get along and run smoothly.
Everywhere else in the world that allows people to actually do things - and the Europeans that "just do things" in defiance of all the idiots in charge - will own the world in ten years. The EU will be a sad little footnote about the dangers of bureaucratic overreach and pompous elitism.
I’m based in Denmark and have incorporated multiple companies. It is very easy and digital and costs very little, even if you get a lawyer to do it for you.
Maybe the issue is a few member states that are behind on digitalization?
In my experience EU is better at setting the guidelines and then the member states can implement the details themselves. When they try to push things it becomes bureaucratic - just look at the cookie law and GDPR. Both great ideas but overly complicated.
Then 3-5% of the entire money flow goes to private pockets/bankers. Are you f.cking kidding me, an optimal gpd growth is ~3% but we giving it away to some parasite for free? Why, I do not consent nor agree.
This parasites, blood suckers, ignorant puppets, with full power and kart blanch can´t see further then their nose. BUt ofc a parasite kill the host and move elsewhere, so I guess no issues here.
Stop this nonsense throttling damn it, you need to be prosecuted legally for economic murder and sufferance caused because of it.
-force banks to respect EU free trade union and stop them from discriminating EU citizens and companies who are not citizens
-stop abuse when it comes to currency conversion rates
-raise VAT-free threshold to something that doesn't catch very small companies, 200k EUR in sales to EU would be a good start (currently it's 10k)
-force EU countries to move all the bureaucracy online; it's very realistic, Poland has done it (it's not 100% yet but close to it)
-enforce English as 2nd official language for business related paperwork
Instead I am pretty sure we will get more paperwork, requirements and way for bureaucrats to prolong every process and request more documents on the way.
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/proximity...
Flat out these social differences and you'll have the social support you need to fight and/or collaborate as equal with everyone else. It's very simple.
ps. I'm not saying everybody should stay "put". But ppl shouldn't be migrating within the EU for these reasons. That was the initial goal anyway, then they started celebrating things that no one in the EU cares about as if it's something that matters (i.e. Apple vs EU dispute over the charger...)
So 27 individual implementations of this, as opposed to the current 27 different implementations of how to incorporate and assign equity?
Seems… silly?
I’m all for making it more attractive to create startups in the EU… But I don’t think a directive is the right way
It seems somehow untrustworthy this >Our entrepreneurs, the innovative companies, will be able to register a company in any Member State within 48 hours – fully online.
which sounds like not everyone will be allowed to do this? or is it "our" like European is our.
Dude come on, I know they're not in the EU but like, there it feels like practically the same country if you don't mind the loveable accent and the crazy prices in another currency :)
There are some who talk the talk, but when it comes down to it, the behemoth that is the Brussels (and Strasbourg!) machine will never accept reducing its influence.
Re: Strasbourg, ditching the EU Parliament in Strasbourg completely would a really great first step to indicate that the EU is serious about cutting waste. However, the French have a veto, so it will never happen.
https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/20/eu-parliament-s-114m-a-y...
About 2012, it was incredibly difficult to start a limited liability partnership/corporation in the UK, roughly physically-located around Chelsea to Canary Wharf. One of the big hurdles was acquiring specific record-keeping instruments that weren't sold in specialty legal stationery shops, but only by some dude literally selling them out of his boot (trunk in America). Maybe the other partners had outdated information, which was a possibility. Contemporaneously, it was possible to start a Delaware corporation online in the US in under 3 days and for less than $300 USD.
Also to move forward maybe it is time to stop using words like "innovation", "ecosystem" and "startups" all over because they seem to have lost their meaning over time.
Most of Europe have been screaming those buzzwords, invested a lot of money and tinkered its bureaucracy to enable them for at least 25 years. With obviously very little results.
So maybe it is time to think out of the box.
Maybe the real "ecosystem" includes the people cleaning the toilets, the farmers growing potatoes and the electricians. Those people are even more crushed by the bureaucracy. Maybe lifting up everybody is the way forward.
I would welcome any reform that does not target a specific type of actor (like "startups"), need to be plugged in to the latest tax shelter or need for a lawyer.
- [0] https://xkcd.com/927/
American startups and businesses get investor money from all over the world, including from Europe. Willingness to invest in startups depends on the downstream of willingness to invest in business in general. If venture capital investors know that there's a lot of money willing to invest after the startup phase, then they are willing to take more risks. And so on for every phase of investors, until you reach big institutional investors like retirement funds.
It looks like the proponents here have fallen into the classic European thinking: "Let's talk and make papers to make our wishes become true". Instead of trying to understand reality and why things are the way they are.
They should ask themselves why any European investor would want to invest in a European startup instead of in an American startup. They should ask themselves why European entrepreneurs should create their startup in Europe instead of in America. When they have the answers to those questions they know what solutions to propose.
My experience doing business in and with America has been nothing but fantastic. They have all the infrastructure and all the culture to help entrepreneurs and anybody who wants to do business. They want to do business as well. Need a credit card processor? Need an LLC? Need a bank account? Need a business loan? It's easy, the USA is fucking open for business.
In Europe it is hostility mostly all the way, from banks to regulators to governments, and so on. The easy part is registering a company, which is just as swift in Europe as it is in the USA. But apart from that you won't find any friends in the process. Even if you're European. Even in the country and the city you were born in.
Americans love new things and new ideas and see them as opportunities. Europeans see them as threats. And that is mirrored everywhere you turn. You might agree with the European perspective in a society-wide perspective, but for startup businesses the American mindset fits much better.
It's called "Limited Liability" - The problem is fully encapsulated right there in two words, self-explanatory. How am I the only person who realizes how corrupt this is as a concept? Now say "Corporate Personhood."
Now combine the concepts "Limited Liability", "Corporate Personhood" and "Globalization" - How is it not 100% clear that this is a horrible, horrible combination of ideas! Satanically horrible.
You shouldn't need to set up some fictitious structure to carry out a business. You should be able to categorize your company however you want; a club, a team, a blockchain, a gang - You and your team provides a service, you get paid, you split the profits by whatever mechanism you see fit. We don't need to all agree on the terms. I can't stop thinking how dumb this is and how much I hate participating in this retarded system.
We're a failed species. I hope the AGI replaces us soon. Humans should be stripped of any power and laws abolished.
The only way would be to copy it individually so it is the same in each member state which breaks the purpose of it.