EU Inc, or 28th regime: reaction from the EESC Employers' Group

18 March 2026 - Today, the EU Commission announced the new EU Inc, formerly 28th regime, a unified legal framework aimed to support growth and business.

This proposal is a pragmatic and forward-looking step to tackle the long-standing fragmentation of the Single Market. By offering a directly applicable EU corporate form, fully digital incorporation, and a tangible reduction in administrative burdens, it provides a much-needed pathway towards greater simplicity and legal certainty for cross border business, particularly for startups and scale-ups.

Yet the initiative will only work if it addresses deeper causes of fragmentation that continue to erode competitiveness and will only succeed if it delivers what decades of partial integration could not: faster, simpler, and more predictable conditions for doing business in Europe.

Ultimately, its test lies in use, not design. If firms and entrepreneurs embrace it as a genuine tool of integration, the 28th Regime could mark a turning point in making the Single Market truly single. If not, it risks remaining an elegant yet frustrating framework , a missed chance to translate ambition into competitiveness.

By Antonio Garcia del Riego, member of the Employers' Group of the European Economic and Social Committee, in charge of the Study on "Establishing the 28th regime in Europe".