Lara Natale / Sep 2026
Image: Shutterstock
At the World Economic Forum in February, Commission President Von Der Leyen called for a "single and simple set of rules" enabling entrepreneurs to incorporate within 48 hours and operate seamlessly across the Union.
The announcement responded to calls from the EU's start-up community, mobilised under the EU-INC banner and exasperated by bottlenecks that make it nearly impossible to scale a company across the Union - bottlenecks forcing founders who love Europe to consider leaving it in order to grow. The announcement also built upon an informal commitment from the EU Heads of State and the backing of key institutional leaders Calviño, Lagarde, Georgieva, Draghi, Letta. The EU-INC community are now sounding alarm bells on technical compromises that risk diluting the essence of the single and simple set of rules promised: if negotiations run to planned timeframes, 100 days remain to decide whether EU-INC “becomes a real European standard, or a law nobody touches”.
Business and institutions in Europe largely agree on the need for a timely and robust EU-INC. European think tank perspectives are more divided: some warn that a 28th regime risks duplicating existing frameworks like the European Company Statute, or fear a race to the bottom on labour and tax standards. But the stronger reading is that a well-designed EU-INC does the opposite: by respecting national tax and labour law while unifying only the corporate shell, it will remove friction without eroding standards.
Why fragmentation is costing Europe its edge
Europe has the talent, the universities, and the research base to lead in the emerging and frontier technologies that will define this century. Without decisive action, we risk losing that advantage. In his report “Much More than a Market”, Letta presented the idea of a fifth EU freedom - the free movement of research, innovation, knowledge and education - for Europe to embed research and innovation drivers at the core of the Single Market. But freeing the flow of ideas means little if the companies built on those ideas remain constrained by 27 different legal systems. EU-INC addresses precisely this gap, offering the structural backbone that the fifth freedom needs to translate into real economic outcomes.
Europe’s pipeline of STEM graduates is strong and its scientific output world-class. However, the EU innovation ecosystem is still divided into national silos, particularly at the early stages where companies must scale quickly or risk falling behind. Capital, legal frameworks, and corporate infrastructure remain fragmented. Europe is underperforming relative to its potential.
Completing the Single Market for startups is therefore not a niche reform. It’s central to Europe's socio-economic future and the next generation of businesses and business leaders. Simplification sometimes means adding new Brussels regulation to remove the old. If we want clarity and resilience for the next wave of European businesses, we should be pushing for Brussels to take the reins, because only an EU-level solution can eliminate cross-border friction and allow companies to build at continental scale from day one.
A genuine, end-to-end 28th regime - EU–INC, established by Regulation and anchored in a central, digital-first EU registry - would provide the unified legal infrastructure and modern governance our talent and capital markets need.
More than a market: a platform for ambition
But this initiative is about so much more than competitiveness. It is about opportunity. For millions of young Europeans, the promise of the Union must be tangible. Europe must be a place where you can make your dreams real: where you can found a company, raise capital, attract talent, and scale - without leaving the continent. EU–INC would send a powerful signal: that the European Union is not only a market, but a platform for ambition. To quote Enrico Letta, through the EU-INC, Europe can indeed “find its new Erasmus or Airbus”
The geopolitical context makes this moment decisive. Amid intensifying competition with the United States and China, technological leadership underpins economic security and political sovereignty. Innovation is strategic and no longer optional. A fragmented ecosystem weakens Europe's position in a world of continental powers acting with scale and speed.
EU–INC, which remains proposed as an optional regime, respecting national taxation and labour law while creating a unified corporate framework for those who choose to operate across borders, would strengthen Europe's collective capacity to compete without diminishing Member State sovereignty. If the Union is serious about competitiveness, about delivering opportunity to its citizens, and about asserting its place in a shifting global order, the Commission's proposal must deliver a true European framework that fully addresses the real obstacles founders face.
An investment in the next generation
From the Coal and Steel Community onward, every generation of European leaders has built the foundations for the next. The Single Market, the Euro and Schengen were not ends in themselves, but investments in future prosperity. Today's young Europeans deserve the same commitment: giving them a continent where they can innovate, build, compete and invest is not simply good policy but, at its core, a question of intergenerational fairness.
These next one hundred days are a moment to align Europe's economic architecture with its political ambition. Completing the Single Market for innovation would be a concrete step toward the Ever Closer Union envisioned by the Founding Treaties and toward a more competitive, sovereign, and opportunity-rich Europe.
It is also a moment for think tanks to match the seriousness they once brought to the Euro and to Schengen. Those were not treated as technical footnotes to European integration: they were understood as defining questions of the continent's future, and studied, debated and championed accordingly. EU-INC deserves the same treatment. If Europe's research and policy community is serious about the next generation, it must bring its full weight to this debate.
