Company law / use of digital tools and processes

EESC opinion: Company law / use of digital tools and processes

The objective of the initiative is to ensure the digitalisation of EU company law. In particular, the initiative will aim at enhancing transparency through increased availability of company information at EU level. It should enable the cross-border use of authentic and trustworthy data about companies, also through the application of the once-only principle, and make the existing rules and procedures fit for the digital age.

Key points

The EESC:

  • supports further expansion of the use of digital tools to ensure communication between companies and authorities involved in cross-border activities, as well as the promotion of the "digital by default" principle, providing that nobody is left behind;
  • supports the requirement for undertakings to make information on place of management and place of the main economic activity available in national registers and the Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS);
  • recommends expanding the scope further to include cooperatives and foundations in the Directive and to require access to BRIS where information on these types of companies is already included in national registers;
  • recommends further expanding the list of information that must be provided and updated on an annual basis to include the number of employees, the sectors of activity (NACE code) and, in the case of undertakings formed by EU company law, agreements on worker information, consultation and participation rights;
  • recommends adding a verification of the identity of persons involved in the formation of a company to the legality checks of the preventive control and extending such preventive control to the reorganisation of undertakings through EU company law;
  • supports the obligation for registers to provide up-to-date data and recommends strengthening the provisions on penalties to ensure that non-compliance measures are effective, proportionate and dissuasive;
  • supports the once-only principle (no resubmission of company information) when a company from one Member State sets up subsidiaries or branches in another Member State, provided that it is allowed to decline the acceptance of the information when there is a reasonable doubt that adequate levels of the reliability of information in the register of the Member State were not guaranteed.