Brussels: For years founders have complained that building a company across Europe means rebuilding it in every country, and the Union’s answer is now on the table. In March 2026 the Commission adopted EU Inc., the so-called 28th regime, an optional Union-wide legal form that would sit alongside the twenty-seven national company laws rather than replace them. The pitch to EU startups is blunt: incorporate once, operate everywhere.
The mechanics are deliberately eye-catching. Under the proposal a founder could register an EU Inc. company within 48 hours, for less than 100 euros, with no minimum share-capital requirement. Company information would be filed once through an EU-level interface linking national business registers, and corporate processes would run digital by default across the firm’s life. The aim is to strip out the duplicated notaries, filings and fees that make cross-border expansion expensive.
The case for a single legal home
Supporters frame the 28th regime as overdue plumbing for the single market. A firm in Tallinn that wants investors in Paris and staff in Berlin currently juggles three legal systems; a common form promises one rulebook for formation, governance and, potentially, the employee stock options that today vary sharply between states. The Commission has paired the measure with a broader Startup and Scaleup Strategy and a five-billion-euro Scaleup Europe Fund aimed at deep-tech companies that too often cross the Atlantic to raise growth capital.
The competitiveness argument carries weight. Europe generates world-class research yet watches many of its most promising firms scale in the United States, where a single market and deeper capital pools reward size. Advocates argue that lowering the legal friction of staying European is one lever Brussels actually controls, unlike the harder problems of pension capital and fragmented stock exchanges.
Why some say it falls short
Not everyone is convinced. Legal scholars warn that an optional regime layered on top of national law could add complexity rather than remove it, creating a twenty-eighth system that interacts awkwardly with the existing twenty-seven. Much depends on the detail: if tax, insolvency and labour rules still flow from the member state where a company operates, the promise of incorporate once, operate everywhere may prove thinner than the slogan suggests.
There is also the politics. Company law touches national traditions that capitals guard closely, and earlier attempts at harmonised European corporate forms drew limited uptake. For EU startups the question is practical rather than ideological: will investors, banks and courts treat an EU Inc. entity as familiar and safe, or as an untested novelty best avoided until others go first?
The proposal now enters the slow machinery of negotiation between Parliament and the Council, where its boldest features could be sanded down. Even so, the direction signals something notable. Brussels has accepted that its own legal fragmentation, not just a shortage of money, holds back the firms it wants to keep. Whether the 28th regime becomes a genuine launchpad or another well-meaning option gathering dust will hinge on how much substance survives the coming bargaining.
