Already being discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703877
I too tried to submit eu-inc.org yesterday I think, but was then redirected to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696097
Seems someone else might have the same workflow, and the de-dup detector let it through for whatever reason.
How would this organization address that fundamental psychological block?
I haven't seen that personally, most of the VCs I've worked with here in Europe who live here in Europe, invest in European companies. Most of them invest in companies in the same country they live in, because it's a bit of a hassle to invest in companies from other countries currently (hoping that EU-INC makes that easier), but none of them regularly invest in US companies.
However, most HNW Europeans who invest in early stage do not invest in the EU and therefore you will not have worked with them.
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 you're assuming I only know these people because they specifically invest in European companies, is that what you're trying to imply?
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.
Again, that directly goes against my own experience with the very same people you say are investing largely in the US. Not sure if I'm not being clear, or if I'm using the wrong words, but clearly something is missing/misunderstood here.
If the EU really wants to light the fire, they should invest all those suddenly available defense euros in European companies only. Keep that going for a decade and there'll be a whole new generation of angel investors and small funds run by recently exited entrepreneurs with a soft spot for proper innovation. The SV VC culture didn't pop into being magically. It happened because a sufficiently large % of VCs had been entrepreneurs in a previous life (and not bankers), and their attitudes rubbed off on the rest.
"Today, if a company wants to scale up, it is confronted with different requirements in each Member State - that leads to an overwhelming 27 different rulebooks."
One of the biggest investors in Europe are pension funds. And this is one of the reasons why they did not invest in EU startups. And they did not expect this move until 2028. So it's moving faster than expected for whatever that is worth.
https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/pension-funds-set-to-drive-europe...
https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/pension-funds-are-open-to-investi...
The EU Inc. makes pan-EU operations simpler for businesses. This decreases internal barriers for trade, so it will lead to growth!
I feel like the mentality problem will follow the market realities. If startup founders become rich, they turn into investors and the startup snowball keeps growing.
It'll make it easier for investors in one country to invest in businesses in another (assuming both are in EU of course). Larger pool of available investors == larger pool of investors who are fine with higher risks.
Currently, when you raise money, you usually end up with just local investors, because others can't be bothered to having to understand your local laws and regulations, and with everything that comes with that.
Personally, that's what's stopping me too. In one case I still went through and invested in a company in another country, but in most cases I don't even bother reading deeper about the company unless it's in the same country, would have to be an exceptional idea and team for it to be worth it.
For my third venture, I cold emailed a US VC (from their about us page) that specializes in cyber. Within a month I had a term sheet. I didn’t take it because it was contingent on relocating to the US or adding a US based cofounder/senior person ... but they were super proactive, introduced me to senior cyber operators, getting design partners and were clearly willing to underwrite founder risk early.
In contrast, simply changing my LinkedIn status to “stealth” triggered 15+ inbound messages from EU focused investors .. mostly low effort outreach, deal scouts .. It got to the point where I had a template reply along the lines of: “I’m not looking for VC coaching or therapy sessions — I just need fire and forget capital. If that works, happy to talk.” Every single one either went silent or declined.
In my experience, many European investors index heavily on hierarchy, control, validation, and internal consensus and tend to operate from a very rigid playbook of what a “proper” startup is supposed to look like .. whatever "proper" means.
Or, in reality: there's literally no expectation for companies to succeed or to turn in profit in the US, and hasn't been for over a decade.
US startups now exist to do one thing hoping for exactly one of two outcomes. Do: spend unlimited investor money. Hope: to be acquired by larger entities, or to engage in VC-subsidized predatory-pricing long enough to try and kill others doing the exact same thing, and become "too big to fail".
I agree it is Eu-wide or pan-EU rather than pan European.
Its probably not going to solve the problems it sets out to given all the differences between EU countries legal systems, tax, regulation etc.
And by "it" we mean both "free choice to be part of the union or not" and "legal jurisdictions".
Much like "an American firm" doesn't mean Canadian or Brazilian.
See comment above:
> Its obviously EU
I know how continents work. I don't think you know when contextual usages of language work.
One might have said the use of the word "American" was misuse engineered by US Americans, to make themselves the "main" America. But for many reasons I think the context is very different in Europe, especially since the obvious grab by EU institutions hasn't really worked among Europeans, even EU Europeans.
EDIT: Further to that "Pan-American" is well understood to not just mean the USA, so "Pan-European" cannot possibly mean the EU only except by very poor wording choices or a very political agenda.
I don't "live in that context", I'm aware of it can can use it when appropriate.
The only way would be to copy it individually so it is the same in each member state which breaks the purpose of it.
Which.. would be a good idea, but I am not holding my breath for it to happen in the next 10 years.
yes you company needs to be rooted in a specific country, and sure moving company roots between countries is still not always trivial (anti capital flight laws are a thing). But that isn't really in conflict with a EU INC per-se. I mean they do point out that it will have
> Local taxes & employment
and this isn't in conflict with
- the same business form being available in all EU members
- central EU registry
- Standardized investment documents ( * this is only investment documents, not e.g. tax documents)
- Standardized EU-wide stock options
- For every founder ( * with some limits)
Like there are already some "EU level" business models, e.g. you company can operate as a Societas Europaea (SE). Now a SE is for other use-cases so not really the same at all (it's more like the EU version of a German GmbH), but it shows that things "in that direction" are very much viable.
Hmm - any examples of this applying intra-EU? That feels like a violation of the free movement of banking services.
All investments I took part of implied a lot of back and forth on conditions adapted to the specific case, preferences, fears, etc. I have doubts that "standardization" can be reasonable achieved here.
> - Standardized EU-wide stock options
EU does not have attributions on tax, it's the national governments that do (see https://european-union.europa.eu/priorities-and-actions/acti...).
The issue with stock options are that they are taxed, so you will have to consider each country in particular.
Maybe you would like for EU to have tax responsibilities, but I wouldn't jump to that without thinking about the implications. As an example the Euro monetary union without a fiscal union can causes issues already (for some explanations check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_union).
You have to select a state to incorporate in. You can't incorporate "federally". All states have different laws and regulations relating to business. Just like in Europe.
So they're chasing a false idea.
Of course, that's the existing pan-European SE which is a public company. Needs like a few sentences changed in the existing regulation to extend that to private companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea
Having a EU based one will be great.
Now, that may not work in all jurisdictions for reasons of local taxation etc (and you'll have to work out payroll tax, benefits etc) but that's almost never anything to do with the legal entity type!
Neither of which is in EU, which is exactly the point. Should be an EU one which is usable...
Man, at least read the title of the submission, even if you're not gonna be bothered reading the contents. This is clearly about EU, incorporating in either of those two places would defeat the entire purpose :)
> the legal entity you choose is possibly the least consequential
I think this is a bit of the goal with EU-INC, so people don't have to think about it as much. Right now, if you're multinational, you really have to be careful what country you use as your base. Hopefully, with something like this, in the future, you can also include a "EU-INC" in there, and advice people to just go with the simplest way. I think that's the dream at least.
UK is in Europe.
Regardless, being able to incorporate in UK doesn't help much unless you're in UK yourself, given they're no longer in the EU.
The amount of founders who choose to domicile their company in Estonia because the ticket rates and ease look attractive and who don't understand that this will still need to be administered in their local market as a CFC (controlled foreign corporation) would probably say differently.
> Just choose a jurisdiction where investors understand how the legals work (Delaware C-corp, UK Ltd is OK too) and there's a finite administrative burden and/or commoditized tooling in place to help you handle it.
That's exactly what EU-INC is trying to provide/solve afaict.
American startups and businesses get investor money from all over the world, including from Europe. Willingness to invest in startups depends on the downstream of willingness to invest in business in general. If venture capital investors know that there's a lot of money willing to invest after the startup phase, then they are willing to take more risks. And so on for every phase of investors, until you reach big institutional investors like retirement funds.
It looks like the proponents here have fallen into the classic European thinking: "Let's talk and make papers to make our wishes become true". Instead of trying to understand reality and why things are the way they are.
They should ask themselves why any European investor would want to invest in a European startup instead of in an American startup. They should ask themselves why European entrepreneurs should create their startup in Europe instead of in America. When they have the answers to those questions they know what solutions to propose.
My experience doing business in and with America has been nothing but fantastic. They have all the infrastructure and all the culture to help entrepreneurs and anybody who wants to do business. They want to do business as well. Need a credit card processor? Need an LLC? Need a bank account? Need a business loan? It's easy, the USA is fucking open for business.
In Europe it is hostility mostly all the way, from banks to regulators to governments, and so on. The easy part is registering a company, which is just as swift in Europe as it is in the USA. But apart from that you won't find any friends in the process. Even if you're European. Even in the country and the city you were born in.
Americans love new things and new ideas and see them as opportunities. Europeans see them as threats. And that is mirrored everywhere you turn. You might agree with the European perspective in a society-wide perspective, but for startup businesses the American mindset fits much better.
What if the founders can't get a visa?
The assumption that the world is flat, trade is free, and people can just be anywhere - globalization - may not hold true for much longer.
Ah yes, the "real business" of American startups: losing billions of dollars a year with not even a business plan to turn a profit, in hopes of being acquired by a larger entity.
I have various experience with opening businesses and my impression is that the quality of service is the same as for personal matters, not worse nor better. My complaint (for both personal and as business) is that you stumble upon low qualified people that just do not care. If you know what to ask and how things work, it's mostly ok. If you need to discover by yourself (and nobody helps you) you will have headaches.
> Americans love new things and new ideas and see them as opportunities. Europeans see them as threats.
That's definitely true, and a big frustration for the entrepreneurial type. But, think like an American - see it as an opportunity! Once European are convinced things are not "a threat/evil" they will work more steady with you, for the longer term. I worked at a number of projects with US that changed direction so often that nothing was ever finished - because they always went for the newest idea. Not ideal either.
In practice ... there is always so much bureaucracy and inertia. I don't think the current EU model works well. I also don't think a copy/paste USA 2.0 works either, yet this seems to be the primary objective by the people in Brussels (that is, = politicians, not all folks in Brussels of course). There is such a huge disconnect between what people such as Leyen babble, and what people want or need or may want. And a lack of decision-making power too. So I think most of those projects will end in failure.
Personally I think an EU model will only work when the agendas are NOT unified, because unification leads to disagreements. You can already see this happening in regards to politics or war - some countries want to, oddly enough, serve Russia. That may be a fine decision for a state, but if other states push for another approach, you have a problem here. Now there are discussions to simply isolate the "non-compliant" states, but this is a bad approach since it will again lead to fragmentation and more people being angry at Brussels here. So this is a failing model. Splitting up things into separate aspects will also, of course, lead to more bureaucracy, but states would more easily form a specific opinion and align towards that, without being handicapped by other states that don't want to go that route. I don't see any other way for this to work. The EU in its present form is just setup for failure - the current model simply does not work, and the proposed new model is even worse in many ways e. g. 2/3 majority basically means that the big states will dominate the small ones. For instance, if Germany and France want to go to war against Russia (let's assume this were the case), then they'd have to send troops to the front - and they are unwilling to do so. So other states are more likely to be threatened. That model not only does not work but is also unfair.
Of course legal or taxation models are different to war, but the different countries have different wealth and opportunities, so a one-size-fits-all also can not possibly work. We saw this with the EURO where weaker countries struggle permanently. The whole EU needs to be completely re-designed - and this is not going to happen due to inertia alone.
Flat out these social differences and you'll have the social support you need to fight and/or collaborate as equal with everyone else. It's very simple.
ps. I'm not saying everybody should stay "put". But ppl shouldn't be migrating within the EU for these reasons. That was the initial goal anyway, then they started celebrating things that no one in the EU cares about as if it's something that matters (i.e. Apple vs EU dispute over the charger...)
Is it? I doubt it. There isn't a large country on earth where the salaries don't differ across regions.
It doesn't even work in a single country for the simple reason that governments have very different ideas how to redistribute taxes. If one country can't do it well, how could the EU?
Didn't think so.
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 is that the end result will require notarized declarations of honour, financial plans stretching decades into the future, 30 page business plan documents, reams of corporate governance documents, and tons of other nonsense to protect against the perceived risk that someone who failed at starting a business once fails a second time.
There needs to be UX requirements on the process from day one against which the end result is judged. (E.g. "a company should be able to register in x days", "a complete application should be no longer than y pages", "application costs should be less than z euros").
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".
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.
My point is that this move will not happen. I don't believe EU can overcome a huge and extremely motivated army of bureaucrats.
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 sure it ultimately reduces innovation.
But in reality, getting all the paperwork together is probably a couple of hours of work. You can buy services that do it for you for a couple of hundred Euros.
Yes it will.
The vast army of bureaucrats in any country does whatever is in their power to make sure their specific requirements are included into the process. What do you mean they would like to open a 3D printing workshop with no Environmental Impact Study done?!
Each time the Commission comes with a new rule, most countries agree with it. And if its an "unpopular", the game for each gov is to blame the EU.
I'n not entirely sure about that.
The vast majority of entrepreneurs are complaining about unrealistic requirements and inconceivable burdens in Germany. Certainly no one wants any of this. Yet somehow the rules pile up.
> In Germany
And then
> Yet somehow the rules pile up.
Which is just German culture as much as food is Italian. If you want rules for everything I'm hard pressed to think of a more regulated country than Germany. And the populace, in general, might scoff at how long things take but absolutely want to understand what the process is... So yeah, you can't have it both ways
Unfortunately the influence of Germany over other EU countries is quite strong in terms of regulations.
Absolutely no one wants more regulations, yet they slowly pile up in the whole EU. I live in Poland, where regulations are incomparably more sane than those of Germany, but even here it slowly grows.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250227-is-there-no-such...
That sounds like a really good use for AI.
No, it is not a really good use for a word prediction engine.
Better than potentially putting risk and costs on other companies, the country and/or it's citizens.
> nonsense to protect against the perceived risk
It's not a perceived risk. No rule is made without cases.
I can generally reverse engineer from the UK Companies Act what the cases were, but many EU countries have much more onerous requirements for what seems like no good reason? Perhaps the cases were too long in the past and things work differently now? What risks are we talking about, anyway?
This is really down to individual countries' red tape and suspicion.
The risk element is also not at all attached to forming a company (hence why it can be so simple and quick), it is with funding and finance. So banks will want to see a business plan but the company registration office does not, or should not, care.
In EU you will need to deal with VAT basically from day one (10k EUR of revenue). In US you will not deal with it until you can afford it as thresholds are very generous.
The monkey’s finger curls. All contract text is now sized at 2 points.
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. However, that doesn't work in practice if you're offering your services online, as many payment gateways in Europe will not deal with non-business accounts.
You can't even say they manage to regulate actual problems; they only reinforce the big players. The cookie consent banner nonsense and ongoing legal fight with Apple (and GAFAM in general) didn't bring anything of value to end consumers.
Cookies haven't disappeared; they have just become a major annoyance that you have to spend a lot of time clicking on and tracking hasn't been reduced, quite the contrary. The iPhone is still a locked-down device, with Apple maintaining a monopoly on software access as well as repairability (their repair program is such a joke that they should be tried for contempt if the EU actually had any power).
Bureaucracy is just cancer, and the EU is fully metastasized; there is not much that can improve until a major failure happens.
If you want to create a business, you have to pay the bureaucracy before you even make a single cent. Business has become more profitable to the government than the actual business owners; those thriving are the big ones who can afford to play the lobbying game and engage in regulatory capture and offload most of the cost on the taxpayers while profiting overseas.
You'd be surprised at some of the weird things that can happen in the current systems in the EU if you try to do business across borders.
Like: your company suddenly automatically becoming deregistered, or you might get a sudden huge tax bill, or you might even inadvertently get charged with fraud.
Hasn't happened so far knock on wood, but it's a lot more work to stay on the light side than you'd really like.
This is all because the national systems still sort of assume that you'll live and work and stay inside one EU country. You end up constantly fitting square administrative pegs into regulatory round holes.
A lot of the EU's promise is actually theoretical without a proper pan european legal entity.
Yeah, I feel a bit the same way.
Just to make it clear to random passerby's, this is exactly what the proposed EU-INC is for, to create this "pan european legal entity", in case it wasn't clear from the context. I initially asked myself "But that's exactly what it is..." so maybe others end up thinking the same :)
Unless there are permanent-establishment issues, withholding taxes, or other country-specific digital tax regimes, where your users are based shouldn't affect how/what taxes you pay.
Otherwise, if you don't have any employees or presence in other EU countries and only doing digital services B2C, you shouldn't have to do anything specific about the taxes you pay.
It’s more because taxes and the judiciary are bound to countries.
TBH I doubt it's going to be possible with current status. Where will an EU-inc be based, Luxembourg? and how would that be different from any other Lux company.
But maybe we could at least have some business standards that will be enforced all over the EU. It says "Local taxes & employment" , which also means local laws, which means 27 laws for every little thing. I thought they were going to address that
Completely and totally defeats the purpose.
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 document certification, and EU-wide digital ID so no need to fly in and sign in person.
Singling out Deel because you brought it up (and I ragequit after reading their "deel" and consulting it with a local lawyer), but I have the exact same story for every employer of record I've been involved with here in EU, and I don't know a single person who's been happy with them either (again, all employees/contractors).
I understand that it's comfortable and convenient for the employer (presumably, or at least the perspective of outsourcing this and reducing liability outweighs everything else), but these companies absolutely do not know what they're doing wrt local laws.
As I said, anecdotal, and a few years old.
Just for hiring someone from France?
The ultimate Goyim.
But here is a problem: If your clients are in Croatia and you have a Croatian company, you don’t have to charge VAT if you earn under 60k per year. But if your company is in Estonia, you are required to charge VAT even if you earn under 60k.
Is this not simply because companies in Estonia enter VAT at 40k per year (rather than 60k)?
(and IIRC Croatia was also at 40k a year ago, now is at 60k with some politicians trying to raise the entry to 100k)
The reason this "28th regime" actually works—and bypasses the previous vetos — is that it’s optional. It doesn’t try to force Germany to change its local GmbH laws or kill the notary system overnight. Instead, it creates a parallel, voluntary path. Berlin doesn't have to give up its red tape for local shops, but they have to let a "Unified European Company" exist alongside them.
If we let national pride or local bureaucracy stop this again, we are essentially telling our best founders to leave for the US. Let’s stop protecting red tape and start protecting our future.
Please elaborate. You're complaining that DE tax funds go to the EU? Very curious what you're talking about and your rational.
Mercosur anyone?
You are right that this threatens the status quo, though. If this works, founders based in Germany will likely abandon the GmbH. That will require swallowing some national pride and admitting that the current system is simply a less efficient, less competitive legal form for high-growth companies.
One thing I think is also worth mentioning are labor rights. I am not arguing against the German model of employee protection. Mitbestimmung could be viewed as a good thing, even if it will mean less power to the VC and / or founders. And frankly, I don't care if the consensus forces strict, German-style Mitbestimmung on the EU-Inc. Stricter form of EU-INC is still vastly better than nothing at all.
Asianometry has a great video on the labor rights in germany btw - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0teMtLT9XI).
I’m based in Denmark and have incorporated multiple companies. It is very easy and digital and costs very little, even if you get a lawyer to do it for you.
Maybe the issue is a few member states that are behind on digitalization?
In my experience EU is better at setting the guidelines and then the member states can implement the details themselves. When they try to push things it becomes bureaucratic - just look at the cookie law and GDPR. Both great ideas but overly complicated.
Austrian company and you want to take investment from a venture fund in X country? It'll get complicated very fast. That's part of what this trying to fix and make simple.
It's called "Limited Liability" - The problem is fully encapsulated right there in two words, self-explanatory. How am I the only person who realizes how corrupt this is as a concept? Now say "Corporate Personhood."
Now combine the concepts "Limited Liability", "Corporate Personhood" and "Globalization" - How is it not 100% clear that this is a horrible, horrible combination of ideas! Satanically horrible.
You shouldn't need to set up some fictitious structure to carry out a business. You should be able to categorize your company however you want; a club, a team, a blockchain, a gang - You and your team provides a service, you get paid, you split the profits by whatever mechanism you see fit. We don't need to all agree on the terms. I can't stop thinking how dumb this is and how much I hate participating in this retarded system.
We're a failed species. I hope the AGI replaces us soon. Humans should be stripped of any power and laws abolished.
What's really difficult is setting up a compnay and opening a bank account in the company's name from abroad.
I am absolutely for it. There are too many different types of company structures in the individual EU countries and they don’t work well when you move and come with all sorts of different risks. Obviously many are also just cumbersome to start and dissolve. You could start five US LLCs within ten minutes of filling out some online forms whereas to start one European entity depending on the country you might have to make a notary appointment, register with the national registry and the tax authority. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement which can take days to weeks.
That's what the personal income tax is for.. and all the other taxes payed by the individual.
That way countries can compete in being the best environment for companies.
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 countries could compete to be the best system to attract companies and entrepreneurs.
If you could solve all those problems and still had to go listen to the Notar recite the contract in a monotone, it would be a worth trade.
Why is Germany ten times less efficient?
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, and calculate how much their cut will be was weird at first. Of course being extremely busy with actual business, I forgot, and got a letter with an 100k Euros invoice attached. Apparently they assumed 15 employees with 45k gross salary, and thought this is a fair trade union contribution! When I didn't respond to that, while discussing it with our lawyers, they sent a fine over this invoice which made it 140k. This is all within 3-4 months of registering mind you! At the end the lawyers handled that, but yeah, what the hell..
That’s basically already the case. You can incorporate in one member state and offer your services in another member state. That’s part of what the EU assures. Still, there are many reasons why it doesn’t make sense for people to incorporate in any random member state.
I did this as a subsidiary for a US company and literally had to email and call people every few days to move the process along (mostly, it was the banks who somehow expected us to be a multi-national company and wanted to charge an arm and a leg just to let us open a bank account. Most banks outright refused us).
When the notary finally filed the paperwork to the court, the court replied after a few weeks with additional clarifications for which we had to go AGAIN to the notary to do the whole song and dance of them chanting at us in German at 1000 words per minute.
Everything took painfully long and delayed investment for while. People have absolutely no idea how painful it is to merely have the incorporated entity available. Then, it takes a few weeks to get your tax ID - this is when you can start employing people / accepting payments etc.
In the ToS it states: >These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California
> Imprint: eu-inc.org, Factory Lisbon, Av. Infante Dom Henrique 143, 1950-406 Lisboa, Portugal
Dude come on, I know they're not in the EU but like, there it feels like practically the same country if you don't mind the loveable accent and the crazy prices in another currency :)
It reveals too much that this is actually done by amateurs. Heck, even the most basic business courses I took at a European uni show that this is NOT how you want to attract potential customers or investors.
It’s the first link on the home page (“in-detail proposal”). One would presume anyone interested in what EU-INC is to read the section titled “WHAT IS EU–INC”.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/da/speech... https://tech.eu/2026/01/20/the-european-commission-launches-...
Also, about reducing it down to "an Ad for unofficial merch", isn't this literally the grassroot movement that led to what was announced today? Or am I getting the relationship wrong? The domain in question was registered 2024-10-09.
So correct me if I had way too little coffee, but that subdomain is under eu-inc.org meaning eu-inc.org is in fact the grassroot movement then? I don't understand the complaint, seems to be the right people? You're mad about that they also sell hats?
This is unofficial, pushing for merch, 5 lines of info page, and should not have replaced a post about more detailed news reports.
It's even linked on the website of the organizers behind it https://klinger.io and https://www.linkedin.com/company/eu-inc/about/
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/proximity...
Also to move forward maybe it is time to stop using words like "innovation", "ecosystem" and "startups" all over because they seem to have lost their meaning over time.
Most of Europe have been screaming those buzzwords, invested a lot of money and tinkered its bureaucracy to enable them for at least 25 years. With obviously very little results.
So maybe it is time to think out of the box.
Maybe the real "ecosystem" includes the people cleaning the toilets, the farmers growing potatoes and the electricians. Those people are even more crushed by the bureaucracy. Maybe lifting up everybody is the way forward.
I would welcome any reform that does not target a specific type of actor (like "startups"), need to be plugged in to the latest tax shelter or need for a lawyer.
- [0] https://xkcd.com/927/
-force banks to respect EU free trade union and stop them from discriminating EU citizens and companies who are not citizens
-stop abuse when it comes to currency conversion rates
-raise VAT-free threshold to something that doesn't catch very small companies, 200k EUR in sales to EU would be a good start (currently it's 10k)
-force EU countries to move all the bureaucracy online; it's very realistic, Poland has done it (it's not 100% yet but close to it)
-enforce English as 2nd official language for business related paperwork
Instead I am pretty sure we will get more paperwork, requirements and way for bureaucrats to prolong every process and request more documents on the way.
kvgr•2h ago
hanspagel•2h ago
mrtksn•2h ago
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 people and pay taxes. On the contrary, the margins are fat. The reason that the tech sector isn't a large one in EU is that its easy to incorporate in USA and access the full EU market from there instead of incorporating in some small EU country and deal with their bureaucracy and internal border limitations. The 28th regime and the EU-INC is to address exactly that.
If the USA-EU relations deteriorate enough, it will also create instant trillion Euros market. Just look at the quarterly reports of US tech giants, they generate EU revenues that are not that behind the US revenues. For Apple thats %60 of the US revenue, or ~110B$ for the last quarter and that's happening despite Apple having a much smaller market share in EU.
A full blown conflict between US-EU will be a huge opportunity to replicate the US tech sector in EU and having an EU-INC will be the necessary facilitator that is currently missing when compared with the landscape in USA.
ExoticPearTree•1h ago
There is no such thing as slave labor in the tech sector. Some countries offer a lower barrier to entry than others. The EU has a very high barrier to entry when it comes to taxation.
You can believe what you want, but I think every country's goal is to reduce taxation as much as possible for companies and for people. Unfortunately, the current in the EU is to keep raising them and give state more and more monopoly on services.
mrtksn•1h ago
Most of the Europeans trust the government more that they trust the businesses and demand some services to be provided by the government and they all collect taxes accordingly. Some countries like Bulgaria have relatively small governments and do %10 flat tax for companies and individuals and other countries like France or Germany provide robust government services and safety net and do much higher taxation.
pjc50•1h ago
(see Apple Ireland)
kvgr•56m ago
mrtksn•36m ago
> 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.
traceroute66•2h ago
450 million and counting people would still prefer to live and work in the EU than anywhere else.
Even more so with present geopolitics, to put it politely !
PaywallBuster•1h ago
majority of population of any given country doesn't emigrate ever, even inside EU where it would be extremely easy
mrtksn•1h ago
Its also factual that there's a large scale migration intra-EU, with people from poorer countries moving to rich ones to seek jobs. Bulgaria, Romania and Poland are prime examples for that.
Its also well documented that those same people stop migrating and even coming back once their counties level up with the rest of the EU, again Poland and Bulgaria are good examples for this in the last years.
EU is trying to make sure that the poorer countries receive the help they need to catch up and it looks like its working.
traceroute66•1h ago
If you go to the CNN website there are lots of articles on there right now (e.g. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/us-woman-moved-to-germany) about US peeps who have emigrated to Europe recently and are thoroughly enjoying their new life with no plans to return to the motherland in the foreseeable future.
I can't possibly think why. ;)
ExoticPearTree•1h ago
Because unlike the US, we don't speak the same language. If there would have been a real push to have a common EU language since its inception, we would have been more mobile and more US like. But no...
traceroute66•1h ago
The majority of Europeans, and especially those of recent generations speak incredibly good English.
Most Europeans speak 2–3 languages anyway, so there is always a common language to be found. No need for one to be forced on you.
ExoticPearTree•55m ago
There's a big difference between being a tourist in Europe and actually living here.
traceroute66•21m ago
But honestly, I'm not sure what the problem is. As previously mentioned by other people on this discussion, vast swathes of Eastern Europeans live and work in the West and have had no trouble whatsoever picking up the local language. As they say, the best way to learn a language is by immersion.
Most Europeans will have gone to a school where they typically learnt a minimum of one extra language and often two extra languages.
With the exception of Finnish, the majority of Western European languages are not that difficult. Its not like Chinese or Japanese which are simply impenetrable unless you went to school there or you are super-smart and managed to pick it up in later life through sheer brain power.
zajio1am•6m ago
kvgr•53m ago
lotsofpulp•1h ago
Besides a fractured market with lots of different bureaucracies to deal with, the lack of at-will employment is a big labor cost when you need to be able to quickly spin up or spin down operations.
Welfare should always be a responsibility of the government, not businesses. Let businesses business and let government redistribute wealth.
Cthulhu_•1h ago
carlosjobim•1h ago
ExoticPearTree•1h ago
In the US, this provides the companies with the levers they need to maintain a functioning business in pretty much an instant. In the EU you can't do that.
formerly_proven•1h ago
The US hire-and-fire approach is then the other extreme.
The optimal amount of worker protection is somewhere in-between.
lotsofpulp•1h ago
The government should be providing protection, by way of providing education and welfare to support reallocation of labor, and taxing businesses to do it. Requiring each business to do it and then policing them is far less efficient for all parties.
carlosjobim•1h ago
atmosx•1h ago
Usually, high taxes go hand in hand with high quality welfare state. Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of business ppl are educated and understand the added value of an accessible publicly funded healthcare, pension and education system.
Commonly listed (and perennial business problems) are: unstable political environment (in the sense that tax law changes every four years, complex legal system, so long term planning is impossible), corruption (meaning you have to know who to bribe to get the job done), crime rates and lack of infrastructure.
veltas•1h ago
eclat•34m ago
Having said that, the lack of proper integration is a huge problem, like imposing tarrifs of over 100% on ourselves.