The key facts

  • EU Inc. is an optional company form: online registration within 48 hours, a cost of up to €100, and no minimum share capital
  • Two JURI votes were cancelled in October due to disagreements over workers' rights
  • The committee vote is scheduled for 5 November and the plenary for 12 November; both dates are provisional

What is EU Inc. and why the plan is stalling

The EU Inc. project, proposed by the European Commission on 18 March, is meant to become an optional company form operating alongside the national systems of the 27 member states: digital registration within 48 hours, a cost of up to €100, and no minimum share capital. However, as Euronews reports, two votes in the legal affairs committee were cancelled in October, because political groups failed to reach agreement on workers' rights.

The essence of the conflict

Under the plan, companies would follow the employee participation rules of whichever registration country they choose. Trade unions and MEPs from centre-left groups fear that firms will opt for jurisdictions with weak board-level employee protection. Business advocates, on the contrary, believe that applying several national systems would make the project too complicated.

Counterclaims from the EU-INC campaign

The EU-INC campaign, backed by more than 26,000 supporters and figures associated with Stripe, Mistral AI, Klarna and Wise, points to the opposite problem: the EU-wide central registry has been removed from the Council's text, and the harmonisation of employee stock options is limited. Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné stated that the regime cannot work without the harmonisation of stock options.

What's next

A new committee vote is provisionally scheduled for 5 November, with the first plenary vote on 12 November; both dates are not final. According to Euronews, the project is not dead, but the fight now is over which parts of it will survive into the final text.