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Introduction


1. EU-INC

1.1 EU-REGISTRY

1.2 EU-DASHBOARD

1.3 EU-FAST


2. EU-ESOP


3. Taxation


4. Employment


What we DON’T want!

FAQ & Glossary

Supporting Appendices

Authors & Acknowledgments

🇪🇺 The EU-Inc Policy Proposal


A proposal written by the European startup ecosystem For the European startup ecosystem Join & contribute!

What is the EU-Inc?

The EU-Inc is a proposed pan-European company structure. It aims to streamline incorporation, management processes, and fundraising for innovative businesses across Europe. Over 13,000 people signed the petition for it – if you haven’t already now is the time.

We got a chance to improve Europe for startups

Let’s be honest, raising money for startups and other innovative companies in Europe is hard. The main reason is that our startup ecosystems act in national silos. Barely any investor wants to invest in companies from other legal systems – and we’ve got 27+ of them. Additionally, once you’ve managed to raise money you still need to figure out how to hire pan-European talent and how to make stock options work in dozens of countries. In a nutshell European entrepreneurs have to be unfairly lucky to be successful in creating large companies in Europe - or they need to migrate to the US.

Let’s fix that! Let’s make Europe the best place for entrepreneurs worldwide.

A standardized legal entity for all of Europe is the first step in the right direction.

The community works on this proposal together

This is a workspace to work on the Policy Proposal for EU-Inc. This is an open call to the startup community to contribute and a transparent process for policymakers to follow. Dozens of people & organizations have already contributed, many experts from leading pan-European law firms, startup & VC associations, and a community of innovators (see Authors & Acknowledgments ).

But this is still a work in progress – and we need your help.

Let’s show an ideal solution to Brussels

The European Commission will set its 2025 agenda this winter and it will include initiatives to support startups – among others the “28th regime”. Thanks to the urgency that European startup associations have created over the last years, the European Commission will work on something. But the time to influence how this will look is now. Together we can use the publicity around the EU-Inc petition ****to ensure startups and scale-ups in Europe have the legal framework they need to thrive and compete globally and secure Europe's future competitiveness.

This document is created by the startup community

We need experts, founders, lawyers, tax specialists to read this, provide feedback and flesh out parts that are still missing. The EU-Inc has the potential to unify the European startup ecosystems by creating one pan-European standard for incorporation and investment**.** But we need to get this right. We, as an industry need to unite and show clearly what’s needed. Here on this website.

We also need people, like you, spreading the word about this. Do you want to improve Europe for startups? Now is the moment to act!

Everyone can help

  1. Founders & VCs: Read this document and let us know what we are missing. Share this with your legal and policy advisors. Ask them to highlight where it is failing to address a pain point, you are facing when operating in Europe. Also highlight parts that are hard to understand.
  2. Law Firms & Subject Matter Experts: Help us get this right. Join ****us as co-owner of a section and help by moderating & integrating feedback for the final proposal. Law firms like Orrick and Bird & Bird have already joined and volunteer their time – but we need all hands on deck.
  3. Policymakers: Engage directly with this community-backed proposal. It’s a transparent fast way to understand the real-world needs of the European startup community. Help us make sure, we solve them the right way.
  4. Everyone: Share this website and help us get eyeballs on it. We need the whole European startup ecosystem to stand behind it and want to gain enough political capital to ensure this proposal is taken seriously in Brussels.

We need you to contribute

The EU-Inc team and multiple volunteers are trying to address and incorporate your feedback. Please act like you would want others to act and make sure you have read the whole document before you start giving feedback. You can either use

Our deadline: January 15th

We will share regularly share release candidates of this Notion as PDFs with Brussels, to ensure this initiative is seen as early and frequently as possible.

But the final proposal has to be given to the new commission on January 15th as they kick off their 2025 work on this topic. Please join our efforts until then to make EU-Inc as useful as possible for European startups.

This is not just “lobbying”. Together we’re redefining how policy is made in Europe. Let’s build EU-Inc, a framework that secures Europe’s leadership in innovation for decades to come.


Next: Introduction

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