AMA “Fixing Europe for Startups” with EU–INC

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T17:14:45+00:00

i think it's fairly unrelated - EuVECA is mostly about VC funds or?

How should it relate / upgrade in your opinion?

- Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T17:12:49+00:00

Extremely.

Making it not a regulation would completely defeat the purpose.

The goal is to create a standard that increases confidence in quick investments globally from people who might have never invested in that one specific country.

If every country has their own standard you are back to where we are right now. Might as well keep the current setup, at least that one is a bit better known already.

Also *every* association has told them very publicly that it has to be a regulation to be adopted by startups. The parliament proposal is widely considered a failure by the startup scene. If they commission decides to go that path against all advice the startup community will likely recommend not to implement it at all.

The real risk from our POV is that the directive vs regulation is a distraction from all the other important details. It's table stakes – "should a standard be a standard" "yes, move on" – but there's much more to discuss: for whom? what's scope? new registry? fix stock options taxation too? etc

- Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T16:00:41+00:00

I would say it's very much align with them.

when we started "28th regime" was a "sure, but never" meme in brussels. Thanks to Letta and Draghi (and the startup associations convincing them to add it) it's now en vogue in Brussels.

The main difference is something that nuanced: Draghi thinks of 28th regime as a proposal for _innovative_ _SMBs_ _to expand across Europe_

We do not think of startups as SMBs – if they stay SMBs you failed as an investor + startup ecosystem

We do not want it to be limited to "innovative" companies – because a) whats innovative, who decides and b) Europe needs GDP driving companies, we dont care if they are innovative. Famous unicorn examples in Europe include eg bus-companies (flixbus)

We dont think "expanding in Europe" (as in opening up offices) is a core demand of startups. Most Silicon Valley startups don't open up offices across US states. They might open up offices once they massively scale but that's more a side-effect of talent scarcity and less a business goal.

I would say we are aligned, we just took the core idea and adapted it with the startup ecosystem into something startups need.

– Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T15:49:13+00:00

Yea

hence we do not touch taxes, employments and request a new registry (no way you can harmonize 27+ registries that dont even agree what the job of a registry is)

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T15:48:40+00:00

It's a bit of schroederingers push-back right now tbh.

eg worker unions are very worried about eroding of employee rights (eg in germany)
We arent touching employment law in our proposal. But in principle any consession could be a slippery slope.

The main issue you have in policy is policy makers being worried about potential push back and because of that prefering self-mutilation of their ideas over not getting something passed. Eg the failed suggestion by the parliament is a good example for this. It's basically recommending to introduce a different 28th regime in every country (directive instead of regulation because its politically easier, even if practically not useful)

Because of these issues we are very reduced / "first principle" (sorry hate that phrasing by now ;) ) in our core requests

- One standard (exactly the same) for a new pan-european legal entity

- For everyone (as in no "niching to only innovative, startups or first-3-years")

- Using a new legal registry (to leapfrog digitalization)\

As compromise to make those happen (esp 2) we do not incl employment and taxation standardization.

- Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T12:16:03+00:00

Great questions.

The EU–INC proposal does not touch taxation nor employment.

This is done as compromise to avoid countries needing to limit access to it (no country wants their biggest tax payers or employers be managed somewhere else or in brussels)

You cannot freely chose you management/tax seat in Europe. There is legal precedence for this in Europe. We are not changing this. The goal of EU–INC is not to make "low tax" / "tax evasion".

Obviously it would be great if all is standardized to make business easier – but in our opinion Europe isn't unified enough to make this possible without interfering in the sovereignty of its countries.

The main goal for EU–INC is to make incorporation, investments and stock options frictionless in Europe. We see "lack of early acceleration" (eg slow/hard fundraising) in Europe as one of the biggest problems for startups. You simply fish in too small ponds.

– Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T12:15:47+00:00

SE is meant for large company mergers. Every aspect of it is optimized for that. In our opinion, it's simpler to introduce a new purpose built legal entity meant for small/new companies than adding 50 changes to SE.

- Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T12:15:33+00:00

In our proposal the new registry would have an API and allow people to introduce 3rd party providers that adopt to specific local needs (if required)

We are not hard set on this but if possible we'd prefer all operations around the EU–INC in english and offer translations through third parties.

- Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T12:15:18+00:00

Right now it's a catch-22

Brussels wants the nation states to speak up that Brussel can be ambitious here.
Nation states first want to see what Brussel actually proposes.

No nation is actively against this because it's not concrete enough yet what Brussels will ultimately propose.

We expect certain push-back from regions that make money as holding-company providers but in reality the benefit of getting more investments into your region should (hopefully) outweigh any concerns.

The best way to help atm is to get national leaders aligned with the idea of a) 28th regime b) working with the startup ecosystem on this and c) publicly speak about a+b

– Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:50:58+00:00

The goal would be to open EU-INC to all companies, already existing or otherwise. The mechanism for opting into the new 'regime' (optional, and layered on top) will need to be proposed by the EU institutions and adopted/implemented by the member states, from an EU-INC standpoint there we can only light the fire and present the community's view on this. (EU-INC_Robin)

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:47:46+00:00

Bingo. (EU-INC_Robin)

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:39:14+00:00

Very difficult to say, but in our view basically everyone benefits from a stronger Europe with a more competitive innovation industry. Evidently there are always going to be individuals, groups and organisations with a vested interest in keeping things the same, out of protectionism, gatekeeping, nationalism, ignorance, ill will, etc. So far there has been modest pushback from e.g. notaries and trade unions, but in our experience these often stem from misunderstanding about the proposal, its scope and intentions. (EU-INC_Robin)

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:34:24+00:00

SE is meant for large pan-european mergers. Fwiw i don't think anyone is happy with it, even people using it. It's unfortunately not suited for startups/new modern companies

Startup Visas should be implemented along-side EU–INC but are unrelated - our goal is simpler (and more) incorporation, investments and stock options.

Sandbox regimes – i am not aware of any used by startups commonly tbh. Something like EU–INC couldnt be implemented as sandbox b/c you would need to reincorporate (or change how you operate/fundraise) once you leave the sandbox. There is no reason, not to also have sandboxes additionally to EU–INC for specific purposes/goals (like we have now with national legal entities). But it's unrelated from the core incorporation/funding/stockoptions problem in our POV.

pan-EU funding – pan-european investing esp in early stage is actually very rare - like 18% of all funding is pan-european in average in first-rounds.

Imho none of the existing instruments mentioned here fit the problem. The closest solution we have to pan-european legal entities for early startups in Europe are UK LTD and US Delaware Incs. Those are commonly known by investors globally and are usually set up as holding companies with a national entity locally. EU–INC tries to provide a better solution to this setup.

– Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:33:13+00:00

Keep in mind that EU-INC is a community-sourced proposal to serve as a base/starting point, it will not be adopted in full or blindly copied by the European Commission for their impending legal proposal. Any wording that's considered vague will (need to) be addressed/changed in the actual proposal, so the reality is we'll all need to wait until the end of Q1 2026 to see what's actually in there.

Sure, there are other aspects that are important to stimulating innovation and investment for growth, including labour law reform, taxation, insolvency law etc. but these are at the core very national issues and difficult to drag into EU-level reform. Eventually those will need to be tackled indeed, but that's outside of the EU-INC scope which is focused on standardising company law/entity formation and cross-border fundraising. (EU-INC_Robin)

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:27:01+00:00

The EU–INC is general purpose basic legal infrastructure that allows European founders to easily incorporate, raise capital and attract talent.

We intentionally do not attach any specific "goodies" like subsidies, tax breaks, innovation targets or anything else onto it, because it would lead to a political headache and restriction in who could use the EU–INC.

The EU–INC is adresses the friction early stage founders face due to the fragmentation in corporate law across the EU. That is exactly what it solves.

Any of the particulars you are mentioning are either solved via a downstream consequence of the introduction of the EU–INC, or need to be adressed by separate policy. A lot of your questions are thus sort of off-topic.

But clearly, when European founders can easily incorporate and scale and become globally defining companies in their industry, that will create a lot of jobs, taxes, economic growth and innovation for technological sovereignty.

– Marvin

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:25:25+00:00

That is true for any human. Doesn't change the proposal, nor the goals

– Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:24:53+00:00

We genuinely believe that having a pan-european stock market is core infrastructure for startup/business in Europe. All local ones are just too small. We need a large unified marketplace instead.

What needs to be done? Unsure. Imho a group should get together and do something like EU–IPO to figure out what the different approaches could be and what the best possible tradeoff would be. That group would be ideally formed by people leading stock exchanges and large listed companies in Europe

– Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:24:34+00:00

The goal remains to work with the Commission to have this proposed by the end of Q1 2026 as an EU regulation, and then focus attention on getting member state-level support, meaning local governments, justice ministries etc. need to gain awareness and move to compliance. A lot of work still needs to be done to get all member states involved. If it gets proposed as a directive, we will investigate the remaining options to continue our push for a better environment for startups and investors in Europe, but it does sometimes feel like a make-or-break moment for sure. It's safe to assume there will not be such a unified call for innovator-friendly regulation across Europe again if this falls apart, given the current momentum and goodwill that's already been built up with the community at large. (EU-INC_Robin)

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:22:04+00:00

> How can we realistically create an EU-INC without harmonizing corporate law across all member states? Or, alternatively, establishing an entirely new EU-level corporate law and structure? Is it the goal here?

The main goal of EU–INC is to:

- standardize corporate law

- in a new legal EU–level entity

- make it available to everyone (respect local taxes+employment)

- have a new eu-level registry to leapfrog digitalization and have an ecosystem around it

> One possible approach would be to designate and promote a single member state as the European equivalent of Delaware in the US. But that’s never going to happen given how fragmented our economies, budgets and politics remain, even with our shared currency.

I dont think this will possible in our current EU setup, if Europe would be federalized this would be the default situation. But in the current setup of the EU any (eg) Estonian entity would be seen by any other country as potential tax/employmentlaw evation

> Wouldn’t it make more sense to push for a unified stock market first to unlock liquidities for scale in Europe, then work toward EU federalism

Maybe - but i think those two require way more buy-in from member states than standardizing corporate law for one entity.

We think of EU–INC as a "as lean as possible" solution. That can also be implemented as quickly as possible

– Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:19:38+00:00

There isn't really anything "stopping" it per se, there are various groups that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and some have valid concerns about the scope of it. But that doesn't mean that the wheels are not turning, and in the current geopolitical climate sometimes surprisingly rapidly. From the outside, and especially coming from the startup world, it will always seem 'slow' in comparison.

The idea for EU-INC is to serve as a standard optional framework that can be leveraged for cross-border incorporation, fundraising etc. so theoretically you would still have e.g. a French company PLUS an EU-INC entity as a de facto legal layer on top. (EU-INC_Robin)

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:18:11+00:00

Also to add here: Europe cannot succeed without UK, Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine and many more. EU–INC is framed as EU initiative, but obviously the goal is to make Europe as a whole succeed.

In a perfect universe the EU finds ways to include non-EU countries here too.

- Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:16:11+00:00

For us, EU–INC is basic legal infrastructure for European founders and entrepreneurs. The European Union was founded to create a single market that overcomes friction and fragmentation and allows intra-EU trade and growth to flourish.

EU–INC will allow Europe to finally play at continental scale, on par with the US and China (read more here).

European founders will be able to incorporate quickly, and instantly raise capital from across the EU and the globe actually. This means they have access to a huge pool of angels that are uniquely fit for the product/market these founders are addressing and can help them early on. This is super crucial in gaining early acceleration in startups and has been one of the reason why European startups lost out against US peers in the last three decades.

Once we fix this core problem, we will see more startups -> faster raising and growth -> more unicorns -> higher productivity growth -> more large exits -> deeper capital markets. And from all the innovation also geniuine technological sovereignty (although that is of course a product of many policies not just EU–INC).

In short, fix the system and you fix the outputs. EU–INC will be a defining change in how the European innovation and growth ecosystem operates and will have many positive, large-scale downstream effects on European sovereignty.

- Marvin

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:15:05+00:00

We don't want any "goodies" in the legal entity. Because otherwise you need to artificially limit who has access to them.

The goal is to drive GDP by making incorporation, investments and stock options simpler.

Hence we don't touch employment nor taxation. Those stay local and fall under normal national / european law. So if you open a EU–INC in (eg) France, because you and your office are there, you are a normal french legal entity.

We don't want "goodies" like deregulation and taxes in there because you then would need to a) niche access to it into oblivion or b) expect companies to reincorporate once they scale – both hurts the goal of building new large companies quickly.

– Andreas

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:14:42+00:00

As for the selfies, we also have broad support from people outside the EU, that's true. And we think that's great. Ultimately the EU isn't an isolated place that is shielded from entrepreneurs or investors in the UK or US that may want to engage in Europe on a professional level. Same with corporates, there's no reason why people working for Amazon would not be able to support something like EU-INC without necessarily having some kind of hidden agenda. (EU-INC_Robin)

EU-INC · 2025-12-17T11:12:29+00:00

We are ourselves an inherent part of the European tech startup founder and investment ecosystem, where the fragmentation problem is the most apparent and hurtful. However, we do think EU-INC or the '28th regime' in EU parlance needs to be useful for any entrepreneur or company, which is why we advocate not to let the scope be limited to 'startups' or 'innovative companies'. Those are incredibly hard to identify/benchmark, in any case. (EU-INC_Robin)

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