The EU Inc Debate: OBLB’s Growing Series on the 28th Regime

The European Commission’s proposed ‘EU Inc’ initiative has triggered an important debate about the future of European company law, startup finance, and market integration. At the Oxford Business Law Blog, we have been publishing a growing series of contributions exploring the proposal’s legal architecture and political economy, including its implications for European corporate governance and financial markets.

A central theme across the series concerns whether the proposal can genuinely address Europe’s longstanding structural barriers to startup growth and cross-border scaling. Contributors have examined whether the Commission's current proposal is sufficiently ambitious, what is needed to produce a genuinely usable pan-European corporate form, and whether the framework ultimately provides an incomplete model for European startup finance. Just yesterday, we published a post examing the impact of the 'EU Inc-for-all' approach for access to capital markets.  

The relationship between EU Inc and venture capital markets has emerged as another major focus. Posts consider why founders may strongly favour the initiative while investors remain more hesitant, and whether the regime should evolve into a more structured VC-oriented start-up sandbox.

Other contributions explore corporate governance and regulatory concerns embedded within the proposal. Authors have questioned whether the proposed business judgment rule creates meaningful legal certainty, highlighted anti-money laundering vulnerabilities associated with simplified pan-European incorporation, and identified broader weaknesses and neglected safeguards within the current framework.

The series has also examined possible institutional alternatives and fallback mechanisms, including proposals for an ‘EU Inc Zone’ should harmonisation efforts stall, while also situating the broader initiative within the wider debate about Europe’s competitiveness and capital markets union.

As the proposal evolves and debates unfold, we will continue expanding the series with new contributions examining the legal, financial markets, and political dimensions of EU Inc and the 28th Regime project.

Follow the EU Inc series as it develops here.

ChatGPT produced a first draft of this post, which was then edited for accuracy and brevity.