If you're a business in Europe, you've probably had a version of this conversation: where should we incorporate? Germany, because the engineers are there? France, because of the investors? Ireland, because of tax? Delaware, because it's what the next VC round expects? Every answer is a compromise. Every answer locks you into a national legal stack that wasn't designed for a pan-European, remote-first, cross-border company.
EU INC is the fix.
EU INC in one sentence
EU INC is a single European company legal form — created at EU level — that gives you one legal entity, one registry, one corporate governance framework and one set of filings, automatically recognised in all 27 EU member states.
The short version: instead of choosing between a German GmbH, a French SAS, a Dutch BV or a flip to a Delaware C-Corp, companies will be able to incorporate an EU INC — an entity that is European by default and operable everywhere in the single market.
Why is it called the "28th regime"?
The European Union has 27 member states, each with its own company law — its own rules on forming a company, who can be a director, how share capital works, how to hold board meetings, how to file annual accounts, and so on. That's 27 different regimes.
EU INC doesn't replace any of them. National GmbHs, SASs, BVs and Oyjs will continue to exist. Instead, EU INC adds a 28th regime — a pan-European option that a founding team can pick in addition to the 27 national forms. It exists in parallel, at EU level, and is governed directly by an EU regulation.
Where does EU INC come from?
The EU INC initiative grew out of a long-running observation: Europe's single market works beautifully for goods and services, but its corporate law is still stubbornly national. Companies trying to build a European company in 2026 still face 27 sets of incorporation rules, 27 notary systems, 27 registries, and 27 flavours of shareholder agreement — even though their customers, employees, and investors are pan-European.
The political push for EU INC has come from a coalition of European companies, venture capital funds, policy think tanks and the European Commission. The argument: if Europe wants to produce globally competitive technology companies, it needs a legal form that matches how those companies actually operate — distributed, cross-border, digital-first.
What does an EU INC actually look like?
Under the current drafts of the regulation, an EU INC has these core characteristics:
- Single legal personality across the EU. The company is recognised as a legal person in every member state, without registering a branch or subsidiary per country.
- Digital-native registry. Incorporation, share issuances, director changes, annual filings — all via an EU digital business registry. No paper, no in-person notary queues.
- Standardised share capital and cap-table. Predictable share classes (ordinary, preferred), a clean option pool structure, and instruments like SAFEs and convertible notes that map onto the European entity cleanly.
- Easy-to-use governance. A simple board / shareholder structure that doesn't require a supervisory board by default, and that scales with the company.
- Consistent tax presence rules. The company pays tax where it has real economic activity, with clarity on cross-border situations so you don't get double-taxed or surprised.
- Employee equity across borders. Stock options and RSUs that work for team members in any member state — not just the country where the company is "based."
Who is EU INC for?
EU INC is primarily designed for startups, scale-ups and modern growth companies. But the same mechanics benefit many others:
- Early-stage startups who want to raise from European and U.S. investors without flipping to Delaware.
- Distributed teams with co-founders and employees in multiple EU countries.
- Scale-ups that sell across the EU and don't want to spin up subsidiaries in every country they operate in.
- Non-EU companies who want a recognised European corporate home without picking a single national jurisdiction.
- Agencies, consultancies and SaaS businesses that invoice across borders under a single legal entity.
What EU INC is not
It's worth being precise. EU INC is not:
- Not a tax haven. It doesn't change where tax is due; it simplifies corporate law, not tax law.
- Not a way to avoid national consumer or employment law. If you hire someone in Germany, German employment law still applies.
- Not a replacement for the SE (Societas Europaea). The SE exists, but it's heavy, expensive and rarely used by startups. EU INC is deliberately startup-shaped.
- Not live yet. The regulation is progressing through the EU legislative process — it is not yet possible to file an EU INC. See the EU INC timeline for the current state of play.
Why this matters for European companies
European companies shouldn't have to pick between staying European and being investable. EU INC is the legal form that lets them do both.
For more than a decade, the default advice for European startups wanting to raise institutional capital was: flip to Delaware. That advice wasn't wrong — Delaware is predictable, VCs know it, and its mechanics are battle-tested. But it came at a cost: founders re-locating, tax friction, exit complications and a European ecosystem that kept exporting its own equity.
EU INC changes the calculus. If it succeeds, the default European startup will no longer be a Delaware C-Corp with a Dublin or Luxembourg subsidiary. It will be an EU INC — European by design, funded by European (and global) capital, operating across the single market as one legal entity.
How INC48 fits in
INC48 is an EU INC formation platform. Our job is to take the regulation — which is written for lawyers and governments — and turn it into a product teams actually use: a clean, guided flow that gets your EU INC filed, your cap-table set up, your employee option plan in place, and your annual filings handled automatically.
When filings open, we want you to be able to incorporate an EU INC in the time it takes to make a coffee — not in the weeks or months national incorporations still take in most of the EU.