511–520 of 761 posts
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Truly, this is one of the greatest losses of the UK leaving. For both parties. Advising EU startups on where to incorporate that isn’t London could be so much simpler.
What about Luxembourg?
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That's not a hack, if you operate the entity from Germany, it must be registered in Germany. It's often touted as a tax loophole, but it's not. Tax authorities do not care about you unless you actually make money, then they will come after you.
Which law says it must be registered in Germany?
While for some cases there is room for abuse (like Amazon Kindle eBooks are sold to Germany by a company situated in Luxembourg, while only selling via amazon.de to audience with German residency) However my employer is a Dutch B.V. with headquarters in Germany, thus they avoid having to form a board with works council representatives as a German GmbH (or AG) of comparable size would require.
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It isn't prophecy. The Harvard Belfer Center study (Thucydides's Trap) analyzed 16 cases in the last 500 years where a rising power challenged a ruling empire: 12 of them ended in war. The UK is actually the perfect example of this danger. The British Empire didn't dissolve peacefully - it was effectively destroyed by WWI and WWII while trying to suppress a rising Germany. The subsequent transfer of hegemony to the U…
Sure, but my point is that all that is in the past. The British Empire already fell, and so did all the other European colonial powers. These days, when I think of empire, countries like the US, China or Russia fit the bill much more than the EU, which is struggling to reach that level of integration and influence.
Of course! Especially because there is no unified army control.
But this requires giving more context. We can't forget that there are ways, especially ways made by empires, to force other nations to go to war not only as an ally but also to make them less relevant and take a hit also.
One of the main factors which makes this more probable, is what op mentioned, the raise of fascism and combatant militaristic attitudes exacerbated by the fact that their own nation / empire is a falling empire. And EU didn't fell yet, it is huge economy with more people than the US.
The second point is dubious. A central registry may be better or worse than the best national registry.
The third and fourth are what is usually called the Capital Markets Union in eurobubble speak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Markets_Union
The Draghi report had some specific proposals which are rather realistic:
> Reduce capital market fragmentation > > A. Introduce a European Security Exchange Commission > > B. Reduce regulatory fragmentation to deepen the CMU > > C. Encourage retail investors through the offer of second pillar pension schemes where the successful examples of some EU Member States can be replicated. > > D. Assess whether further changes to the capital requirements under Solvency II are warranted by further reducing the capital charges on equity investments held for the long term.
https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3...
https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/ec1409c1-d4b4... (p. 292)
As a Dutch person I never understood this push until someone told me (and this is true in 2026!!!) that if you open a LLC (Gmbh?) in Germany you have to physically go to the notary and have a person READ OUT all the statutes to you. The whole process including banks accounts etc... can apparently take months in total. Personally I would not create "EU-INC" but just make all local entities legal in every country. Then…
Looks like as per 2022 it is possible to register a GMBH in Germany fully online https://www.brak.de/newsroom/news/gmbh-und-ug-koennen-ab-1-a... also https://www.ihk.de/stuttgart/fuer-unternehmen/recht-und-steu... here are the online notaries: https://online.notar.de/ Firma.de estimates 6 weeks https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/how-to-set-up-a-gm... beglaubigt.de estimates 3 weeks https://beglaubigt.de/ug-gru…
I did it in ~2 weeks last year, where almost a week was caused by the coworking space I rent at not notifying me of the physical mail from the court. If that physical mail would be eliminated from the process you could probably do it in 2 days.
Apart from that, for any non-trivial situation, the majority of the time will be determined by how fast you can proceed through the process of adjusting your bylaws, etc. and evaluating tax situation (so lawyer + tax advisor waiting time).
(after that the process of waiting for a tax ID starts, which depending on where you live can easily be the slowest part and take ~6 weeks on its own.)
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German here. That's not true. What crazy documentation do you require? An ID, proof of residence, and a business plan? (edit: you don't even need a business plan) That being said, everything about the process is annoying and you always have the feeling that you're doing something wrong or forgetting something. Together with some ridiculously slow processing times, it's the perfect combination to frustrate you and I'm…
I don't know much about corporations, but why business plans are needed at all? I mean, for EU citizens. bank (loans), immigration and investors can be interested, but their interests are not covering every corporation out there.
Obviously, having a credible plan helps if you try to convince banks to loan you money or any such thing, but the act of registering a company requires no such thing.
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This is true of all contract notarization in Germany (even when buying a house, jesus that is a slog), and although it is a bendy-banana level silly thing that people focus on, isn't actually the biggest problem in company founding here. MUCH more problematic is unfavorable tax rules making equity compensation difficult, capital requirements, legal/notary fees, and an investor class that is notoriously skittish. If y…
This here is the problem for most of EU countries. We Dutch are proud how easy it is to do business here. Maybe, compared to some other countries. But starting a BV here and 1 month later finding a representative of a trade union (metal sector, which somehow semiconductors fall under together with car garages, petrol stations, steel factories..) and asking me to come to their office in person to explain what we do, a…
You probably have all the info right now, but make sure everything is 'in line'. I mean, have your company codes at the tax authority match the applicable union match the actual things that your company does. Depending on the jobs of the employees, it might be smart to split the company into multiple legal entities.
All in all you can be happy that this happened within a couple of months. Finding this out when you're years underway and then having to pay millions... I've seen plenty of these cases.
Want to start a business in The Netherlands? Make sure to do a 'CAO check' first, think about how to structure your company (one entity? multiple entities? what job goes where?), and do these checks again once you pivot or make certain changes to the actual work that your company does.
The rationale for this is also pretty simple: somebody got to pay for all this nice social security. They say it's part of the risk of being an entrepreneur.
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Each of those places (besides Delaware, kinda) has economies larger than a large chunk of the EU.
Yeah, we've realized that, that's why we keep iterating on the union :)
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German here. That's not true. What crazy documentation do you require? An ID, proof of residence, and a business plan? (edit: you don't even need a business plan) That being said, everything about the process is annoying and you always have the feeling that you're doing something wrong or forgetting something. Together with some ridiculously slow processing times, it's the perfect combination to frustrate you and I'm…
> business plan This is the problem. Let me pivot. Let me fail. Let my investors (including myself) lose time and money in bad ideas. All the bureaucracy in the world didn’t stop Wirecard, but it sure as heck demotivated people from trying something new in Germany.
> On Saturday, I was in Asunción, in Paraguay, to sign the EU-Mercosur trade agreement. It was a breakthrough after 25 years of negotiations. And with it, the EU and Latin America have created the largest free trade zone in the world. A market worth over 20% of global GDP. 31 countries with over 700 million consumers. Aligned with the Paris Agreement. This agreement sends a powerful message to the world. That we are…
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-lawmakers-vote-whether-laun...