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EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

eu-inc.org

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

#571

Post by buzer »

Xylakant wrote: post #523
miki123211 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what's even more important is that the costs for founding and maintaining such an LLC should scale with revenue, including scaling to 0 . In many EU countries, you still have to pay social security and/or health insurance, even if your company brings in no revenue. This isn't supposed to be a problem, as you're not really supposed to officially start a business unless you cross specific revenue thresholds. Ho…

Social security gets paid on wages. Revenue doesn’t play into it.

Not quite true. In Finland YEL (yrittäjän eläkevakuutus, pension insurance for entrepreneurs) is required and it's based on estimated value of the entrepreneur's work input. Even if you pay yourself 0 euros your YEL income is likely higher. The models that insurance companies use take revenue in account.

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

#572

Post by nine_k »

I think it should be stupid simple to create a small company, Sorry, "stupid" is important here, anything lesser would not convey the meaning against the EU background. Something like a proof of identity, a one sheet stating the structure of the company (a sole proprietorship or a small LLC with limited funds and employees), the nature of the business (e.g. "software development"), and a moderate processing fee. The process should be serving a notification, not obtaining a permission.

It should be equally simple to shut down a small company, once all its dues are paid.

Once a company grows larger (say, past 15 full-time employees, or past €10M in revenue), maybe something additional might be asked, because now the company would be able to afford handling it.

And, of course, sensitive things like selling food or medicines would require extra licensing, but it's not that the lack of bakeries or pharmacies what's holding back the tech industry progress in the EU.

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

#573

Post by ivan_gammel »

miroljub wrote: post #503
harperlee wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding other member states to be able to grow may be labeled waste, or investment on creating new markets for Germany.

That's the same fallacy as claiming that rich people save money by donating to charity. Simple example: - Germany gives 100 € to other EU states - Those states 100 € to buy made in Germany goods - German companies have 10 € profits from those sales - German state collects 5 € from those profits In summary, German taxpayers paid 100 € so the state can collect 5 € taxes, and companies another 5 €. Not a very good deal.…

This calculation is flawed. German state collects much more than 5€, because there is VAT etc and, of course, employees of that company pay income tax from their share of that 100€ they just got back.

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

#574

Post by wolvoleo »

galangalalgol wrote: post #557
wolvoleo wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At will employment is something we'll never accept here. We don't need the threat of having nothing from one day to the next. It's good for billionaires but not for actual people that matter. Running a business is not something everyone should have to do anyway. It's good if it's hard. That keeps the cowboys at bay. I would never ever want to own a business. I don't need that uncertainty. I just want a stable wage. T…

I agree with everything you said except for the cowboys bit. I don't think business owners should be a separate class of people. It shouldn't be unusual to meet people that own their business. I don't want to do it, it would stress me. But we can let random people try random ideas without having to start out wealthy, and we shouldn't have the failure of that business and the loss of those employees' jobs, risk the he…

By cowboys I mean the people starting businesses left right and center and just collapsing them when they don't get the desired result straight away. E.g. US venture capitalism. I think it's a really good thing that we don't have that here in Europe. Sure it prevents the googles and metas but those would never have made it that big here anyway because we regulate big businesses before they become uncontrollable. And now that we are breaking off ties with the US we will have to build our own anyway, just with sustainable and fair business models.

Sure we can get society to pick up the tab but the problem is that those cowboys are even more incentivised to be risky then. There should be a penalty for them when it goes wrong.

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

#575

Post by jandrewrogers »

academia_hack wrote: post #168

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…

> It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it.

In my experience this is at least as important. Everyone focuses on the process of creating companies, which is now relatively streamlined in many European countries.

The real, massive difference between the US and EU is how hard it is to shutdown a company and the legal implications of that. I was shocked at how unreasonably slow and painful it can be to shutdown a company in Europe the first time I did it. Many countries effectively treat it as a criminal proceeding. Sometimes startups just fail, that is the nature of startups.

In the US shutting down a company is almost as easy as creating one.

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

#576

Post by yencabulator »

askonomm wrote: post #284
_petronius wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's crazy. Notarization in Estonia can be done entirely online using a digital signature, just like everything else here is done (including voting, getting married, getting divorced, filing taxes, opening/closing a company, etc). From all I hear Germany is still stuck in the 90s for some reason.

Lots of systems are stuck in very old ways of working and using humans as cogs. My American utility bill has a typo in my name that is not there in the online system through which I opened my account; a human in a back office read text from one app and typed it into another. Maybe there was even a piece of paper involved.

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

#577

Post by embedding-shape »

ragall wrote: post #568
wolvoleo wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At will employment is something we'll never accept here. We don't need the threat of having nothing from one day to the next. It's good for billionaires but not for actual people that matter. Running a business is not something everyone should have to do anyway. It's good if it's hard. That keeps the cowboys at bay. I would never ever want to own a business. I don't need that uncertainty. I just want a stable wage. T…

Various places in Europe already have what amounts to at-will employment. There are exemptions for companies under a certain number of employees (e.g. 25 in Italy). There's a wide use of fixed-term contracts (6/12 months). Many work through agencies, which means they can be "fired" with a few weeks' notice.

Depends a lot on what country, but I think you'll find that the ratio of full-time employee vs contractor/at-will employee in most European countries will look very different from how that ratio looks like in the US (or other similar countries).

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

#578

Post by Tangurena2 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #391
academia_hack wrote: post #168

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…

> It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or SA in some EU countries. Totally. One of the biggest and most horrific aspect of it is the KYC/AML. We regularly read articles explaining that drugs are so out of hand that several EU countries, like Belgium, are becoming narco-states: these are front page, major newspaper, stories. We also read articles explaining that cash bills from petty drug dealing…

All this "know your customer" stuff is fallout from 911. We in the US went bonkers as a result of 911 and what used to be tinfoil hat conspiracy thinking ended up becoming national policy.

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

#579

Post by yencabulator »

apexalpha wrote: post #252

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…

In USA, I had to get paperwork notarized to have the local water utility open an account for me.

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

#580

Post by patrickmcnamara »

jsumrall wrote: post #253

I wonder who owns this eu-inc.org website and is selling the merch. In the ToS it states: >These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California

Yeah, I think there is some confusion in this thread. eu-inc.org isn't an official source or anything, though von der Leyen did say "EU Inc" in her speech at Davos. The European Parliament specifically mentioned not liking "incorporated" because it was American terminology preferring "Societas Europaea Unificata" instead which is pretty funny.
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