The European Commission's announcement of EU Inc., a unified European legal form for private limited liability companies, marks a potentially transformative step for the European Single Market. By addressing long-standing fragmentation in corporate law and company formation, EU Inc. aims to unlock Europe's innovation potential and enable companies to scale across borders without multiplying legal complexity.
Fragmentation as a structural growth barrier
Despite the existence of a Single Market of roughly 450 million people, European companies still face significant legal and administrative barriers when expanding across borders. As Ursula von der Leyen highlighted at the World Economic Forum 2026, capital and data can already cross Europe in seconds, yet businesses cannot move with the same freedom. Although the market appears open on paper, the reality is far more complex.
Each new Member State brings a new corporate law regime, distinct registration procedures, capital requirements, and formalities. In practice, this means that companies often encounter a new regulatory environment every time they scale internationally. This legal fragmentation acts as a handbrake on growth and profit potential, pushing many European companies to look abroad in order to scale. In effect, legal complexity becomes a substitute for scale, forcing companies to invest time and resources into navigating fragmented rules rather than deploying capital, talent, and innovation to grow across the Single Market.
EU Inc.: One rulebook for the entire union
The proposed solution is called EU Inc. - a single European corporate form governed by one simple and uniform set of rules that would apply seamlessly across all Member States. The objective is clear: to replace 27 national logics with one coherent European framework.
According to Ursula von der Leyen, EU Inc. would allow entrepreneurs and innovative companies to register a company in any Member State within 48 hours, fully online. Companies would operate under the same capital regime throughout the Union, including a minimum share capital of just one euro. For the first time, private limited liability companies would be designed for European scalability from day one. This would represent a decisive shift away from national corporate fragmentation and towards genuine legal interoperability within the Single Market.
The idea of a European corporate form is not new. For publicly listed companies, the Societas Europaea (SE) has long provided a cross-border legal structure. EU Inc. extends this European logic to the backbone of the European economy: private limited liability companies. In doing so, it translates a proven concept into a form that is relevant for founders, scale-ups, and investors, where corporate structuring decisions directly influence access to capital and cross-border expansion
What comes next: Legislative process and practical impact
The concrete design of EU Inc. will take shape in the coming months. In March 2026, the European Commission is expected to present its legislative proposal setting out the details of the so-called 28th regime. What is already evident, however, is the Commission's recognition that outdated bureaucratic processes must be digitalised and reformed. This development is not merely prospective. Today, the digital formation of a limited liability company is already possible in several jurisdictions.
What is particularly noteworthy is that many of the principles underpinning EU Inc. are not purely aspirational, but already technically and operationally feasible today. Digital company formation, remote authentications, and notarised acts can already be executed fully online in several jurisdictions. This is precisely where notarity's mission aligns closely with the Commission's ambition. At notarity, we are already enabling companies to form, manage, and scale their corporate structures across Europe through secure, legally compliant digital processes - independent of physical presence or national borders. By connecting companies with notaries via a digital-first platform, notarity reduces friction in cross-border corporate formalities and anticipates the operational reality that EU Inc. seeks to establish at European scale. In this sense, EU Inc. is not a conceptual leap into the future, but a regulatory acknowledgement of processes that are already reshaping how companies operate in Europe today.
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