The European Commission’s proposal for EU Inc., the company-law cornerstone of the “28th regime”, promises an optional European company form with fully digital incorporation within 48 hours and at a maximum cost of EUR 100. Its practical value for innovative startups, however, depends less on fast registration than on whether the financing and governance arrangements agreed by founders and investors have the same legal effect throughout the Union. The Council’s first compromise text of 17 July 2026 keeps the welcome features of the proposal but leaves national law much more room to determine whether, and how, such arrangements are given effect. An EU Inc. could thus end up governed by 27 versions of national mandatory rules, reproducing the very fragmentation it was meant to overcome. This paper proposes six recommendations that ring-fence a self-contained European corporate core, protect standard financing documents, make negotiated rights over cash flows, control and exit effective as written, align liability, distribution and employee-equity rules with startup needs, and guarantee cross-border equivalence and uniform interpretation.
This paper was first published in July 2026 as an IEP@BU Policy Brief by the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University (IEP@BU) here: iepbu.substack.com/p/policy-brief-a-single-eu-inc-across
