The key facts

  • The JURI committee failed on 19 October to agree on the EU Inc draft report, having already postponed the vote on 5 October
  • EU Inc envisages online registration within 48 hours, €1 in share capital and documentation in English
  • Opposition comes both from founders, who consider the draft watered down, and from trade unions, who fear circumvention of labour law

Vote postponed again

European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) On 19 October failed to reach agreement on the draft report on the EU Inc initiative — this is already the second delay: the vote had been postponed on 5 October as well. As Euronews reports, the deadlock stems from disagreements among MEPs over workers' rights.

What is EU Inc

EU Inc is a proposed pan-European legal form of company that would allow a business to be registered in one member state and operate across the entire bloc under a single set of rules, the so-called '28th corporate regime'. Founders would no longer have to navigate 27 different national legal systems. The European Commission tabled the proposal in March 2026 with the aim of making it easier and cheaper to set up a business in the EU, reducing the fragmentation of startup ecosystems, and improving talent mobility and access to funding. Under the plan, a company could be registered entirely online within 48 hours, with €1 in share capital and without a notary, and documentation would be kept in English with no translation requirements when operating abroad.

Criticism from both sides

Although EU leaders agreed to finalise the law by the end of the year, the draft faces resistance from several directions at once. On 15 October, company founders said in a public statement that the EU had devalued the initiative through months of negotiations: in their words, all that remains of EU Inc is expedited registration, while key elements — free choice of the country of incorporation and a single employee stock option pool for attracting talent — have been removed. For its part, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) warns that the proposal threatens workers' rights: on 24 September and 20 October, trade unions from various countries of the bloc protested in Brussels and Strasbourg, arguing that companies would be able to use the softer corporate rules to circumvent national labour legislation and social standards.