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EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

eu-inc.org

271–280 of 761 posts

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#271

It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or SA in some EU countries. It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it. Huge amount of risk and cost on founders and a huge distraction from running a business. I think that EU-Inc _could_ be an improvement, but it needs to avoid the committee laundry list of ideas/requirements/form fields that plagues the EU startup ecosystem. My worry…

> a company should be able to register in x days Which EU bureaucrats will fully pass by treating this as "a company should be able to register in x days once the full set of documents has been collected".

Companies are treated like persons legally and while I'm sure there is too much bureaucracy in many places, I'm also sure that there are important documents that should be required.

For example to make sure that a company can be held responsible when it breaks the law.

There are already enough loopholes to disconnect legal responsibility from profit-taking, and not every company is benign.

Sure, if the documents cannot be acquired in X days for other reasons, that would undermine the tagline.

But I don't think that's the main risk.

Let's not forget that some requirements make sense.

In Germany, the government recently decided that some minor applications to local governments must be answered within X days or else are automatically approved.

But "minor" is important here... great for a small business that applies for a permit to renovate there outdoor seatings or whatever.

I wouldn't want for company foundings to be auto-approved without submitting the legally required documents.

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#272

Unfortunately this does not override employment and tax laws - so you still cannot hire someone as an FTE in Paris, from a startup in Berlin for example (without them being a freelancer, or you opening a payroll / tax office in France). But hopefully we can move towards that - standardised taxation (especially VAT and corporation tax would help massively here), the abolition of notaries, standardised requirements for…

[flagged]

"Digital signatures are a Jewish conspiracy" is not something I expected to read in this website

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#274
post #83

I always heard that the issue with startup investment in Europe was the general lack of capital investors willing to take Hail Mary risks on founders with a wild idea and maybe little experience. The market is far too risk-averse for a grassroots early-stage startup scene. How would this organization address that fundamental psychological block?

How is that in the US right now though? Years ago there was a wacky startup of the week on HN raising X amount of funds, nowadays it feels like there's... nothing. Or it's just underreported on HN. Or the billions that funded a hundred startups have all gone down the AI drain.

I acted as a technical advisor on a raise in Q2 2025 and saw figures from the EI Market Research Centre that Q1 Series As & Bs totalled ~$35 BN USD vs ~€4.5 for the EU as a bloc, so very roughly an order of magnitude greater. 2025 was considered a mid year for US VC capital deployment but a good year for the EU.

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of company structure was that?

gmbh or UG, takes about that time to set up, you can start billing before, but still... this is a lot of time of manual paperwork.

But you could choose other forms, no?

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#277
post #238
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the issue. If your business is dependent on slave labor and offloading your externalities on the society to make a profit it simply means your business should not exist. Its evident that labor cost and taxes are not excessive in EU by the reality of existence of plenty of businesses in a healthy society. What doesn't exist in EU is the "tech" business, and the tech doesn't have margins too slim to employ p…

Cost of labour i meant work taxation. You can see the waste everywhere. We could have half income tax, half social security and half health. Instead of taking 50% you your income. We could give 25%. And have more to boost the economy or save for future. EU is in slow death. Dying out, pyramid scheme retirement system mostly.

I'm not so sure about that. Elon Musk and Trump promised something of this sort, created the DOGE department and ended up not saving anything despite claiming to uncover waste.

> Dying out, pyramid scheme retirement system mostly.

The solution to this is more creampies 20 years ago, no government action can change that. Every generation pays for the retirement of the previous one and if a generation makes less kids then they put higher burden on those kids. Before the taxes and pensions people used to look after their aging parents, today people who live in cities and pay taxes so that they can have independent lives from their parents. That's how biology works, people born procreate age and die and if you live in a society the young ones take care of the old onces until they die.

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a tautology - the VCs you've worked with in Europe invest in Europe. However, most HNW Europeans who invest in early stage do not invest in the EU and therefore you will not have worked with them.

> This seems like a tautology - the VCs you've worked with in Europe invest in Europe. But the claim was that early stage VCs in Europe invest in US instead, contrary to my experience. If they were instead investing in US companies, I'd see that instead, I don't know if I used the wrong word here, where exactly is the tautology? I don't understand the assumption that I wouldn't know what my peers are up to, unless yo…

> But the claim was that early stage VCs in Europe invest in US instead, contrary to my experience. If they were instead investing in US companies, I'd see that instead, I don't know if I used the wrong word here, where exactly is the tautology?

Not to disrespect your experience, but I don't it is particularly relevant, because the capital deployment from EU HNW is overwhelming deployed outside the bloc, largely in the US.

> I don't understand the assumption that I wouldn't know what my peers are up to, unless you're assuming I only know these people because they specifically invest in European companies, is that what you're trying to imply?

I do suspect your peers aren't the Europeans deploying the majority of early stage capital or that you don't know what they're investing in.

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