[HN Gopher] EU-INC - A new pan-European legal entity
___________________________________________________________________
EU-INC - A new pan-European legal entity
Speech:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/da/speech...
Author : tilt
Score : 686 points
Date : 2026-01-21 10:49 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eu-inc.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eu-inc.org)
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| I really looking forward to this! I love being in the EU and I
| really like living in Germany. But creating and operating a small
| company in Germany is a nightmare, I hope this can give smaller
| EU companies agility and frictionless setup and operation so they
| can focus on building products and providing services to their
| customers.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Sounds like a German problem. When I last set up a company in
| Sweden I literally went to web UI and clicked "Create Company"
| basically, filled in some details and it was done. Similar
| experience in Spain, fill out 2-3 forms and it's done. How much
| more process could the German government really add here?
| Reviews and interviews, or what exactly is the bureaucracy
| you're complaining about here?
| kleiba wrote:
| _> How much more process could the German government really
| add here?_
|
| Hahaha, good one, little padavan...
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| Never underestimate the power of german bureaucracy lol
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| That's great to know! In Germany it involves a lot of
| physical paperwork, going to a notary to certify the
| creation, taxes are a nightmare, every change you need to
| make again you need a notary. It's so frustrating!
| noosphr wrote:
| It takes 8 weeks from start to finish to be able to get paid
| for your first sale as a German limited liability company.
|
| People outside of Germany really have no idea how sclerotic
| the state is. Mean while Germans suffer from the brain damage
| of having lived there their whole lives and don't see a
| problem with this.
|
| If you think brain damage is too strong a word, the last time
| I brought it up a bunch of Germans came out of the wood work
| to defend an 8 week process as completely reasonable. Then
| when told I could do the same thing in Australia in 15
| minutes they insinuated I was probably a criminal for wanting
| less paper work to open a business there.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| What type of company structure was that?
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| gmbh or UG, takes about that time to set up, you can
| start billing before, but still... this is a lot of time
| of manual paperwork.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| But you could choose other forms, no?
| lm28469 wrote:
| > It takes 8 weeks from start to finish to be able to get
| paid for your first sale as a German company.
|
| You can bill as soon as you started the process afaik
| noosphr wrote:
| As soon as you talk to a notary to prove that you're
| really opening a company you can get the provisional
| business license, or whatever they call it, to open a
| bank account. After you open that bank account you need
| to talk to the notary again to start registering the real
| company. Then you need to transfer the bank account from
| the place holder company to the real company.
|
| I may be misremembering the exact steps because I tried
| drilling all those memories out of my head as soon as I
| left Germany.
| defo10 wrote:
| You can bill, but the company owners are completely
| liable until the process is completed. Then the liability
| goes over to the company. Quite the risk if you ask me.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Not fucking-up in the first 8 weeks does not seem too
| difficult to achieve
| tchalla wrote:
| It's not difficult to achieve to setup a company within
| 15 minutes too but here we are.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| If you're starting a business from scratch, that's 50% of
| what you do, and it lasts longer than 8 weeks.
| 47282847 wrote:
| Company formation in Germany requires identity and statute
| checks by a notary. You can nowadays do that remotely via
| video appointment but it's still a bit of a hassle and delay.
| It's not as bad as people claim, or rather: if people already
| have difficulties with that step I wonder how much fun they
| will have with "bureaucracy" later on.
|
| Frankly, I understand how one can be annoyed at certain
| requirements but how do people imagine it without those? I
| can totally accept temporary annoyances since ultimately all
| of it serves to protect me from harm as a customer. I really
| don't want to deal with companies whose founders already find
| the quite straightforward registration procedure too
| difficult.
|
| The claim by others in this thread that you have to wait for
| the registration entry is false, your company is created the
| moment you pass notarization. While it makes proof of
| existence easier to be in the database, you can act and get
| bank accounts etc with those documents already. And I doubt
| the stability of your business idea if you cannot even wait a
| bit.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Friction is a death by 1000 cuts. Its a week here, an in
| person appointment there, another 2 weeks to send in a
| different ID - all of that adds up to an environment where
| people are reluctant to do anything new.
| westpfelia wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Sweden is the most business friendly country.
| its why so many people move their business from Norway to
| Sweden.
| pimterry wrote:
| > Similar experience in Spain, fill out 2-3 forms and it's
| done.
|
| This isn't true in Spain - all company creation requires a
| notary, among other awkward steps (although as of relatively
| recently in some cases you can now do this over
| videoconference, without physically visiting at least). It's
| not as bad as what I hear of in Germany, but it's non-trivial
| and slow, and the banking setup process is similarly annoying
| and slower than it should be.
|
| You can register as autonomo (an individual freelancer)
| easily with just a couple of forms, but that is not the same
| thing as creating a separate legal business entity (SL).
| lnsru wrote:
| Can you elaborate more? I am self employed electrician in
| Bavaria using simple Gewerbe. It is straightforward at the
| beginning. Literally hundreds of webpages describe the
| procedure. It is obvious, that growing the company into GmbH
| with own VAT number increases the complexity. But I haven't
| seen it other way in Europe.
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| I had my experience with bootstrapping a self founded UG
| (Unternehmergesellschaft), and the process was long (about 8
| weeks), involving me getting support from a company
| (firma.de) to help me prepare all the documentation which
| involved a lot of physical paperwork, then there's the visit
| to the notary which is required. After you do that, you need
| to register with the Finanzamt, and then you start finding
| out about all this other registries you need to pay and
| register to, or that you're automatically registered, but you
| receive separate invoices.
|
| Any changes you need to make, adding more capital, change
| address, requires again, paperwork, tons of hours and again
| the notary.
|
| Taxes are also quite difficult to figure out, I'm not German
| born, and my German is good for conversation, but to read and
| understand the tax has been a problem and I had to rely on
| very expensive tax consultants. (I know, this is my problem,
| not a german problem)
|
| It's not that is hard, it's very time consuming, manual, and
| involves a lot of paperwork. Other countries do this much
| easier. Also, shutting down a company... I'm still trying to
| figure that out :(
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > I had my experience with bootstrapping a self founded UG
| (Unternehmergesellschaft), and the process was long (about
| 8 weeks)
|
| It would have been significantly quicker if you used a
| well-connected law firm.
|
| I know a number of friends of friends in Germany who have
| all visited the lawyer, the notary and the bank all in the
| course of one morning. The whole experience was
| orchestrated by the lawyer because they knew the notary and
| the bank manager. In some cases the lawyer even drove them
| around between locations. ;)
|
| The Steuerberater then took care of the Finanzamt.
|
| Of course this entails extra professional fees. But the
| point is that there are many examples out there showing it
| can be done in less than 8 weeks.
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| But that's the thing, even though it took weeks I spent a
| non insignificant amount of euros to set it up, I think
| it was nearly 2k at the end; and to make it quick would
| probably be another K or so?
|
| It's crazy expensive, because of all the bureaucracy. The
| UG is supposed to be quick and easy to set up, requiring
| minimum capital... but the process proves expensive.
| lnsru wrote:
| The question is always the same: do you really need UG/GmbH
| at the beginning? It's typical rookie mistake. I did it
| too, sold the company for 1EUR to some shady people at the
| end. Gewerbe with 40000EUR in the company's account does
| not have the problems anymore. And the expensive tax
| consultants are just another cost of doing business in
| Germany. Ok, the quality of Finanzamt clerks varies heavily
| depending on location. Current town has nice ones.
|
| I agree, the process is not easy or nice in Germany, but
| it's enough to start businesses despite all the
| complications and overregulation. But getting VAT number
| and bank account in other comments mentioned Estonia was
| huge pita for friends.
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| Maybe I should have taken another road considering the
| size of my operations, unfortunately I was wrongly
| advised when starting up, I spent 1k with a
| Steuerberatung for advice on what was the proper
| structure for me, and still... I think they just adviced
| me the option that was gonna cost me the most to operate.
|
| Lesson learned I guess!
| lnsru wrote:
| I visited many lectures about business at the university,
| participated at Munich business plan competitions and all
| the time holding structure GmbH owning other GmbH was the
| best solution. The reality is that this is best solution
| for medium enterprises, for the bootstrapped start it
| does not matter. If I can't take off as crappy Gewerbe
| the expensive holding will not help me either. Learning
| was not free.
|
| My feeling about tax consultants in Germany is that most
| of them are scammers helping lazy people to enter
| mandatory things in corresponding Elster fields. The ones
| with knowledge are super rare. Better ask AI and then
| verify the information, that's cheaper and makes more
| sense.
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| Some tax consultants are very shady, and some are really
| arrogant. I'm currently looking for one as we had some
| disagreements on pricing with my previous one, and many
| won't even take me due to my volume, or maybe because I
| ask to speak English, idk...
|
| But sometimes I feel they are doing me a favor by taking
| my company, rather than me feeling like I'm hiring them
| as a service.
| mfld wrote:
| Agreed. In case you do not have big investors, just
| register as an individual entrepreneur, get a bank
| account and get going! It can be turned into a LLC/GmbH
| later if business goes well.
|
| Also taxes will be much easier. Just get one of the
| countless apps where you add invoices, and they generate
| tax reports for you. With an LLC or when employing other
| people, getting a tax consultant is advised. IMO, they
| are not expensive - how many hours of your time are you
| willing to spend on this topic instead of paying e.g. 200
| EUR/mo?
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| Can you recommend a tax consultant that charges 200
| EUR/month including preparing the yearly statements?
|
| I'm nearly at 3.5k/year and I have barely 10 invoices a
| month that I need to process between incoming and
| outgoing lol
| mfld wrote:
| It's a good price because the yearly statements for an
| LLC/GmbH are costly. We pay about 200/mo for accounting -
| with some more invoices :) -, 100/mo for payrolls but
| also the yearly statement alone is more than 2k. You can
| save that by not having an LLC - I personally think the
| risk in many software businesses is quite low. And some
| risks must be accepted as an entrepreneur...
| lbreakjai wrote:
| In the UK, it took me half an hour and 30PS to open a Ltd,
| which I think is the equivalent of a GmbH.
|
| It might have changed, but a few years ago you could go from
| 0 to a fully functional limited company, with accounting,
| business account, registered address with mail forwarding,
| etc. in a matter of days, from the comfort of your sofa.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| I think GmbH's have a minimum capital requirement so not
| entirely the same as UK Ltd which can be opened with PS1 of
| assets.
|
| Possibly closer to the US Inc?
| jcmartinezdev wrote:
| In Germany you also have the UG which is like a small
| GmbH, with 1 eur minimum capital requirement, that is if
| you like like the 1k (and up to 2k) it cost to set up.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > creating and operating a small company in Germany is a
| nightmare
|
| To be fair, I think the problem operating in Germany is its
| federated nature. And so you have similar issues to companies
| operating in other federated jurisdictions e.g. US.
|
| If you look at the UK (through pre-Brexit eyes, of course) or
| Ireland, establishing and operating companies is
| _significantly_ easier.
| simon_a99 wrote:
| Unfortunately it's likely that Germany will reject this change.
| Incorporation in Germany is highly bureaucratic and it requires
| physical notarisation. Its not a mistake, Germany has an
| incredibly powerful notary lobby that has already announced its
| opposition to this.
|
| https://www.bnotk.de/en/tasks-and-activities/magazines/bnotk...
| causalscience wrote:
| Lobbies whose only purpose is to sustain themselves even at
| the cost of maintaining friction should be made illegal.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| > The ultimate aim is to create a new truly European company
| structure. We call it EU Inc., with a single and simple set of
| rules that will apply seamlessly all over our Union. So that
| business can operate across Member States much more easily. Our
| entrepreneurs, the innovative companies, will be able to register
| a company in any Member State within 48 hours - fully online.
| They will enjoy the same capital regime all across the EU.
| Ultimately, we need a system where companies can do business and
| raise financing seamlessly across Europe - just as easily as in
| uniform markets like the US or China. If we get this right - and
| if we move fast enough - this will not only help EU companies
| grow. But it will attract investment from across the world.
|
| > Which brings me to the second focus - investment and capital.
| We are now building the Savings and Investment Union. We need a
| large-scale, deep and liquid capital market that attracts a wide
| range of investors. This will allow businesses to find the
| funding they need - including equity - at lower cost here in
| Europe. We have made proposals on market integration and
| supervision to ensure our financial market is more integrated.
| This covers trading, post-trading, and asset management - as well
| as driving innovation and making our supervisory framework more
| efficient. This will help ensure that capital flows where it is
| needed - to scaleups, to SMEs, to innovation, to industry.
|
| > Third priority: building an interconnected and affordable
| energy market - a true energy union. Energy is a chokepoint - for
| both companies and households. Just look at the dispersion of
| prices across European electricity hubs. Europe needs an energy
| blueprint that pulls together all the parts. This is our
| Affordable Energy Action Plan. For example, we are investing
| massively in our energy security and independence, with
| interconnectors and grids - this is for the homegrown energies
| that we are trying to promote as much as possible, nuclear and
| renewables. To bring down prices and cut dependencies. To put an
| end to price volatility, manipulation and supply shock. But we
| now need to speed up this transition. Because homegrown,
| reliable, resilient and cheaper energy will drive our economic
| growth, deliver for Europeans and secure our independence.
| techpression wrote:
| As a Swede the third one is terrifying, unifying the energy
| market has been catastrophic for us, both price and environment
| wise. The latest is added taxes due to choke points designed by
| EU from the first place..
| causalscience wrote:
| Wanna tell us more? Why has unifying the energy market been
| catastrophic for Sweden?
| techpression wrote:
| Having to pay more because of Germany going fossil fuel
| like crazy. When there's no wind and it's dark they cause
| most of EU to suffer since the cost of their coal plants
| are so high. We also send a lot of green energy out of the
| country only to import coal powered from Denmark (not as
| major, mostly happens due to high consumptions) And we're
| also getting a price spike fee, don't dare to put on the
| dish washer when your neighbor is!
|
| All this in a country where electricity was almost free (to
| be fair, our dismantling of nuclear doesn't help here)
| brabel wrote:
| Sweden has plenty of cheap hydropower. But as prices are
| now tied to countries like Germany which made catastrophic
| decisions around energy, Swedes have to pay much more than
| if Sweden had an independent energy market.
| causalscience wrote:
| In that case it sounds like "unification was bad" is an
| unfair characterization. Unification was bad by proxy,
| due to the bad decisions of Germany. If Germany had made
| better decisions, unification would've been good as
| Sweden would've had lower prices on a larger market.
| techpression wrote:
| "Bad or good by proxy" is how all policy plays out
| though, your ideas mean nothing if reality says
| otherwise. And Germany going coal was well known by time
| of unification (one might think it was because of that,
| tinfoil hat on).
| causalscience wrote:
| Personally, I try to not think of the world in binary
| terms. I don't find "unification bad" useful.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Presumably because Sweden is selling some of that cheap
| power to Germany.
|
| The solution to which is to generate even more power in
| Sweden (so you can sell it off cheap and have it cheap
| too) or that Germany produces power more cheaply so that
| it's not giving Sweden so much money for electricity.
| Both of these should happen if the market is set up well.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| That has nothing to do with the EU, it's just capitalism.
| Even if the EU wouldn't exist, the energy companies would
| have found a way to sell the cheap Swedish hydropower to
| Germany.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| I may tell from Polish perspective - loosely speaking:
| Germany and Austria used to share single bidding zone:
| electricity was produced by wind at the north and then
| consumed by factories at the south. The problem: no
| sufficient grid connection - Polish and Czech grids were
| used instead, what caused major problems - loop flows. It
| lasted from 2001 to 2018.
|
| Unification needs to be real, including grids, not on paper
| only.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| It's the Euro all over again, mostly because of this:
|
| > Just look at the dispersion of prices across European
| electricity hubs.
|
| Same Swedes were complaining (and still are!) about having to
| bail out the poorer members of the Union, should Sweden adopt
| the Euro and have a tighter integration with the Eurozone.
|
| The common motivation of the EU is to smooth out these things
| across the countries, so we don't have these wild differences
| between countries. That might mean electricity gets more
| expensive for some members, and cheaper for others, but
| overall should lead to better usage across everyone.
| Basically socialism, applied to energy, so if you're OK with
| that for people, health and other things, maybe it makes
| sense to be fine with it for energy too?
| techpression wrote:
| Well it didn't work for the Euro, and that didn't require
| building massive on demand infrastructure that degrades
| over distance. Socialism for people only work within the
| confines of a society, my parents putting up solar panels
| to offset german fears of nuclear is far away from them
| paying taxes so their neighbor can get health care.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Well it didn't work for the Euro
|
| What? Yes, it did work for the Euro, countries that are
| participating are now more equal than they were before,
| which is the goal. Who knows what will happen in the
| future, maybe Greece or someone else will truly sink the
| entire union, but it hasn't happened yet, so lets not
| confidently claim "it didn't work".
|
| > my parents putting up solar panels to offset german
| fears of nuclear is far away from them paying taxes so
| their neighbor can get health care
|
| That's been the thinking for a long time, but for how
| long can we continue thinking like this? If the world is
| fucked, it'll be fucked for all of us, not just for
| people in Sweden or Germany, so the faster we can realize
| we're all in the same boat, the better.
| techpression wrote:
| Equal in that hey suffer together? When even the SEK
| outperforms the EUR in times of distress you know it's
| incredibly bad. Is it better that all of Europe sinks,
| maybe, but I'm happy I'm not losing my job because of
| pension plans in France or financial neglect in Greece,
| and I'm sure they would say the same if roles were
| reversed. And to be clear, it's not about the people, but
| how governing is done.
|
| The same boat is actually a good metaphor, you tend to
| want many smaller ones and not one big, risk of losing
| everything vs something (to a point).
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Equal in that hey suffer together?
|
| Yes, quite literally "hey lets suffer together", this is
| what we've signed up to, and want. Good for everyone and
| bad for everyone, we're linked and this helps us focus
| more on helping each other, rather than just focusing on
| ourselves.
|
| > The same boat is actually a good metaphor, you tend to
| want many smaller ones and not one big, risk of losing
| everything vs something (to a point).
|
| Yeah, that's probably the two mindsets that differ here.
| EU was created with the goal of "better one big boat than
| many small", because we've tried the "many small boats"
| approach for millennials, and somehow we in Europe always
| end up starting wars against each other. We've had (more
| or less) continent-wide peace now, for a good while
| (maybe the longest it's ever been? Not sure), and
| probably because of the reason that we're more connected
| now, instead of sitting alone in our tiny boats.
| robin_reala wrote:
| The SEK has been underperforming the Euro for years (see
| the massive dip against the DKK which is Euro-pegged).
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| > When even the SEK outperforms the EUR in times of
| distress you know it's incredibly bad.
|
| Currencies aren't an asset. They don't "outperform".
|
| If the Yuan had "outperformed" the Chinese economic
| system would have collapsed.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| I think you're getting cause and effect wrong.
|
| Previously Sweden was much tighter coupled to German prices,
| but since fossil fuels were cheap people didn't really
| notice.
|
| Today due to CO2 cap and trade fossil emissions are
| expensive. [1]
|
| Couple it with a massive renewable buildout leading to a
| decoupling of the prices that didn't happened before.
|
| We now have maximum volatility. Jumping between expensive
| fossil prices and an absolutely mindbogglingly large surplus
| leading to essentially free energy.
|
| As Germany, and the rest of Europe, transitions to renewables
| we will spend less and less time on fossil fuel marginal
| prices and see our energy systems stabilize on renewable and
| storage prices. Outside of emergency reserve style
| situations.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_T
| radi...
| Gud wrote:
| As a Swede(working in the energy sector no less), Sweden has
| only themselves to blame for their catastrophic decisions,
| like killing a world leading nuclear industry. Don't blame
| Germany for Swedens incredibly stupid decision to shut down
| functioning nuclear reactors prematurely.
| vaylian wrote:
| Why was the German shutdown premature?
| Gud wrote:
| I was speaking about Sweden.
| mono442 wrote:
| Energy is expensive because burning fossil fuels is expensive
| due to taxes. A coal power plant pays around two times more for
| emissions than for the coal itself. They're trying to solve a
| problem which they have created themselves in the first place.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| So you suggestion is to remove the taxes and go back to
| mostly using coal for power? Or what's the suggestion here?
| Because those taxes are there because of the pollution, so
| unless you have better way of getting rid of the pollution
| yet using coal for power, I'm not sure there is something
| better than trying to tax it away so other source can be
| focused by business and industry instead.
| mono442 wrote:
| Capping the price of CO2 emissions at a more reasonable
| level like 10 - 20 euro/t CO2 just like it was 10 years ago
| could be a decent compromise.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Decent compromise to what? The group who want to pollute
| the world because it's cheaper? Doesn't sound like a
| compromise many of us would want.
| mono442 wrote:
| Countries outside European Union don't care about global
| warming anyway. It's a futile policy.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| So? Countries outside of EU don't always care for human
| rights or other things we find important.
|
| That doesn't mean we shouldn't still aim for the values
| we stand for.
| mono442 wrote:
| Global warming is ultimately a global problem. It doesn't
| matter if you reduce your CO2 emissions if others aren't
| following.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Indeed, but if everyone starts thinking "No one else is
| lowering their emissions so why would I?", how are we
| supposed to ever make any sort of progress?
|
| Someone doing something is always better than no one
| doing anything, can we at least agree on that?
| mono442 wrote:
| But it is by no means obvious that carbon taxes are the
| right path. Targeted investments in low-emission energy
| sources might work better.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Fair point, I agree, that isn't obvious. What is obvious
| to both of us (I assume?) is that pollution has to be
| lower, not just in the EU, but across the world. But we
| (Europeans) can mostly just influence what happens inside
| of Europe, EU and our countries. Hence, we do what we can
| to reduce it, where taxing it is one approach.
|
| With that said, more investments into other energy
| sources are totally welcome, and I don't think that
| should mean we also need to tax pollution less, we can
| have both :)
| p0pularopinion wrote:
| > But it is by no means obvious that carbon taxes are the
| right path.
|
| When the government says that the market should do
| something, people complain about government interference.
| When the government lets the market do something, but
| sets the right incentives, people are complaining about
| it again.
|
| Co2 taxation is effectively internalizing the cost of co2
| pollution. The price goes up the more we pollute, because
| we have less budget until we cannot reach our goals
| anymore.
| piva00 wrote:
| It does matter to follow through with your values though.
| Humanity isn't supposed to be just minmaxing economical
| output, a common set of values that we strive for is much
| more inspiring than burning everything to the ground, and
| leaving a world of ashes for future generations to
| capture maximum economical output _right now_.
|
| I don't think it's a hard mindset to understand, giving
| up because others aren't taking it as seriously is the
| cowardly way to go about it. It's much more meaningful to
| show it can be done, help to scale technologies to become
| cheaper and more accessible for poorer countries, and
| inspire others with examples that it can be done so
| action can spread.
| kyboren wrote:
| You are right, it is a global coordination problem. There
| are two moves: Cooperate (i.e. reduce your CO2 emissions)
| or Defect (burn baby, burn).
|
| Obviously there are many global actors but we can model
| it simply as a two-player game: Europe and the-Rest-of-
| the-World.
|
| Its economic payoff matrix looks something like
| (oversimplified and with direction only; scale
| appropriately): v Europe/RoW -->
| Cooperate Defect
| |-----------------------------------------| |
| Cooperate | (0,0) | (-1,0) |
| |----------------+-------------+----------| |
| Defect | (0,-1) | (-1,-1) |
| |-----------------------------------------|
|
| If Europe cooperates and the RoW cooperates, nobody gains
| a relative economic advantage and our world doesn't burn.
|
| If Europe cooperates and the RoW defects, Europe loses
| relative economic advantage and our world still burns.
|
| If Europe defects and RoW cooperates, Europe gains
| relative economic advantage and our world (maybe) still
| burns.
|
| If Europe defects and RoW defects, nobody gains an
| economic advantage and our world burns to a RCP8.5 crisp.
|
| Obviously the preferred siutation is everybody
| cooperating so our world doesn't burn and nobody gains or
| loses an economic advantage. But the Schelling point is
| everybody defecting and burning our world to a crisp.
|
| Everyone ought to push for global cooperation; we've all
| gotta live here and it'd be nice not to burn our only
| planet. But if Europe cooperates while the rest of the
| world defects (i.e. the current situation today), you're
| an idiot.
| p0pularopinion wrote:
| That is good, because it is a lie that others are not
| following. People love to point to China for their
| emissions, completely avoiding that China, as the
| workbench of the world, essentially is burdened with the
| emissions of the world.
|
| Developing nations skip the fossil fuel stage entirely
| because Solar in particular and at a ceratain point wind
| is just cheaper than buying Oil and natural gas. Chinese
| EVs are also increasingly popular in emerging markets,
| not because they are more environmentally friendly, but
| because they are more cost effective to operate.
|
| Wether or not it is because of environmental concerns or
| not, the world is moving towards cleaner technology,
| specifically it is also more efficient.
|
| Considering that we in Europe have a remarkable absence
| of easily accessible fossil fuels, Europe should be
| continuing to push towards renewable technologies
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| You might be interested to learn that both of those
| statements are very wrong.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| that is simply untrue. China, for as bad as it has
| historically been in terms of environment, it has
| invested waaaay more than anybody else in clean energy
| [1]. It's a game we are all in together and things are
| moving forward, albeit too slowly.
|
| [1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-
| statistics/charts/annual-invest...
| paintbox wrote:
| Energy is expensive because fossil fuels are destroying the
| only planet we have.
|
| If a person is taking lifesaving medicine that unfortunately
| makes their skin itch, you wouldn't call itchiness "a problem
| which they have created themselves in the first place"...
| yread wrote:
| And how pays for the healthcare that's indeed for the people
| downwind of that plant? How much does lung cancer treatment
| cost compared to coal?
| dv_dt wrote:
| That is a dubious claim of the accounting chain for expense
| of fossil fuels, which also ignores defensive tariffs for
| energy sources like Chines manufactured solar, wind and
| batteries. Though maybe it speaks to more beaucratic process
| around the energy not the core energy costs itself.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Europe is energy poor. We will never be able to compete on
| raw cost with the US, China and similar.
|
| Our path forward are through renewables, which today are
| vastly cheaper than fossil fuels.
|
| We decide the speed of the transition to green cheap energy
| by how much we tax fossil fuels. Low taxes = slow transition.
| High taxes = fast transition.
| mono442 wrote:
| I don't believe this is true. The US has also seen a big
| growth of the renewables in recent years and they have
| managed to do it without carbon taxes.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| That tells you how cheap renewables are today, especially
| when American energy markets generally are more
| monopolistic in structure.
|
| The faster we get off fossil fuels the better.
|
| The growth in the US is much smaller than Europe, except
| a few cases like California.
| pil0u wrote:
| I read through the speech, I'm still not sure if this is adopted
| or not. I found https://www.eu-inc.org/ which seems to be the
| origin of the proposal, but mentions a final implementation for
| 2027.
|
| Just heard about this initiative as a European, I don't have an
| opinion yet.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Just heard about this initiative as a European, I don't have
| an opinion yet.
|
| Same! I'm cautiously optimistic, but need to await the
| criticism from the Americans before I can fully know what to
| think about it. I'm sure it'll pop up here any time soon, NYC
| is just about to wake up.
| drstewart wrote:
| Because Europeans never share their criticisms about the US
| embedding-shape wrote:
| As a parent you have the obligation to let your child know
| how well you think they're doing ;)
| arlort wrote:
| > this is adopted or not
|
| It's not. However from the speech it sounds like the commission
| is ready to put forward their proposal soon-ish
|
| After they do so the actual legislative process is going to
| start where the draft has to go through Parliament and the
| Council to become law
|
| The legislative process is going to take time which is where
| the 2027 date in eu-inc.org comes from
|
| I don't know if there will be legal or political issues around
| this that would delay adoption though
| rozenmd wrote:
| More info here: https://www.eu-inc.org/
| pantulis wrote:
| Builtwith reports this website is built with Framer, is this an
| official EU asset? If that's the case it's also a declaration
| of intentions.
| rozenmd wrote:
| the FAQ clearly states that it isn't an official EU website,
| it was used for petitioning the EU to consider this proposal.
| pantulis wrote:
| Thanks for poiting this out
| kantord wrote:
| seems like a great idea
| poly2it wrote:
| Is there a comparison to the SE structure? My main issue with it
| personally is that it is prohibitively expensive to incorporate.
| nayroclade wrote:
| They have an answer to that in their FAQs: https://proposal.eu-
| inc.org/FAQ-Glossary-14d076fd79c581d18e6...
|
| > While both aim to facilitate cross-border operations within
| the EU, EU-Inc addresses some of the limitations of SE:
|
| > - _No minimum capital requirement:_ Unlike SE, which has a
| minimum capital requirement of EUR120,000, EU-Inc has no
| minimum capital requirement, making it more accessible for
| startups.
|
| > - _Simplified governance structure:_ EU-Inc offers a more
| streamlined governance structure compared to SE, reducing
| administrative burden and promoting flexibility.
|
| > - _Digital ecosystem:_ EU-Inc is supported by a robust online
| ecosystem, including a digital registry and dashboard, for
| efficient management and compliance, which is lacking for SE.
| 3rodents wrote:
| Seems like a broader version of what Estonia are already doing
| with e-residency[1]. Registering a company online in a few hours
| is already easy in a few jurisdictions around the world (e.g: the
| U.K.[2]) so this isn't a particularly revolutionary but the
| intent it signals is good.
|
| [1] https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/ [2]
| https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house
| paintbox wrote:
| Ease of incorporation is indeed not revolutionary, but is
| certainly a good direction.
|
| What is revolutionary (in context of EU of course) is easier
| business operation across different countries, a real
| bottleneck for EU SMEs.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > business operation across different countries, a real
| bottleneck for EU SMEs
|
| Is it actually a "real bottleneck" for EU SMEs? Granted, I've
| only participated in help growing 3 companies from the scale
| of 3-4 developers > ~100-150 and from national sales to
| international, but "going worldwide" or "EU wide" was never
| the bottleneck we had. The most tricky part was figuring out
| exactly how to do VAT for every single country, but after a
| session with a accountant + setting up the guidelines +
| creating a .csv, that's basically it. Besides that, it was
| basically smooth sailing.
|
| Today I'm sure there even are hosted services that does all
| of that stuff automatically for you, probably with Stripe
| integration as well.
|
| What exactly is that bottleneck you're referring to?
| csantini wrote:
| The bottleneck is having a standardized SAFE for Europe.
| Global investors must be able to invest without having to
| understand Italian and Polish corporate law
| embedding-shape wrote:
| That's a different thing all together, but a good point
| nonetheless. Always been dealing with local investors
| when building startups, because of that.
|
| The claim was that "business operation across different
| countries" is a "a real bottleneck for EU SMEs"
| currently, I don't think that has anything to do with
| investors?
| paintbox wrote:
| There's a reason I rarely see local subsidiaries of cool
| small companies from other EU countries - it's too
| complicated to open them, have a couple of local employees
| on a payroll, handle notarization, translations of
| documents, not to mention labor laws etc.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > On Saturday, I was in Asuncion, in Paraguay, to sign the EU-
| Mercosur trade agreement. It was a breakthrough after 25 years of
| negotiations. And with it, the EU and Latin America have created
| the largest free trade zone in the world. A market worth over 20%
| of global GDP. 31 countries with over 700 million consumers.
| Aligned with the Paris Agreement. This agreement sends a powerful
| message to the world. That we are choosing fair trade over
| tariffs.
|
| As someone who lives in EU, been skeptical of it for most my
| life, but for the last 3-4 years kind of turned around on the
| idea of a stronger EU and more independent Europe, I'm really
| glad to see and hear that things are swiftly moving ahead. Things
| like this may seem relatively small, especially with everything
| going around, but these sort of partnerships and agreements
| really do have a large impact on the next decades, and I hope
| we'll see more of this. Fair trade is something we've taken for
| granted, but we've again learned that it's something you have to
| fight for, and I'm happy to live in the EU who seem to still
| realize it's important.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The Mercosur deal is frozen now as it's just been referred to
| the CJEU [0], which means at least 1-2 years of litigation.
|
| [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-lawmakers-vote-whether-
| laun...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Hmm, less ideal.
|
| > A group of 144 lawmakers put forward a parliamentary motion
| to ask the EU Court of Justice to rule on whether the
| agreement can be applied before full ratification by all
| member states and whether its provisions restrict the EU's
| ability to set environmental and consumer health policies.
| The court typically takes around two years to deliver such
| opinions.
|
| Hopefully the court will take a look around what's going on
| the world, and get a little bit of push to act a bit faster,
| although hopefully not compromising on "environmental and
| consumer health policies", that'd be a blunder of it's own.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The issue is this sends a negative message to Mercosur
| member states like Brazil, who are actively being wooed by
| the US such as by creating a US-Brazil Rare Earths Deal [0]
| and wooing Brazilian oligarch Batista brothers [1] (the
| oligarchs who owns much of Brazil's and North+South
| American agricultural capacity [2] and are the power behind
| the throne in Brazil) to get near-exclusive rights on
| distributing Venezuelan oil [3].
|
| Now that the deal is de facto frozen, any remaining
| goodwill between Mercosur states and the EU will burn away
| (especially because Lula put his personal reputation on the
| line right before a highly contested election in Brazil and
| because Spanish politicians constantly meddle in South
| American culture wars [4] due to familial, financial, and
| linguistic ties), leaving the EU even more alone in an
| already lonely and dangerous world.
|
| > although hopefully not compromising on "environmental and
| consumer health policies", that'd be a blunder of it's own.
|
| This kind of stubbornness is why the EU is increasingly
| being isolated globally. Either make pragmatic deals on
| your own terms or end up being forced to by other countries
| on their terms.
|
| [0] - https://www.ft.com/content/401a9e84-3034-4375-bf39-56
| b92500c...
|
| [1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/brazil-
| billionaire-b...
|
| [2] - https://www.ft.com/content/d293237e-e39f-4f4c-89e7-4c
| 52cf937...
|
| [3] -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-19/irmaos-
| ba...
|
| [4] - https://apnews.com/general-
| news-d45baf0e625d4e0fa540b7a472bc...
| mono442 wrote:
| This doesn't solve any issue. Registering a company is already
| usually pretty simple in most European countries. It's running
| the company which is difficult due to regulations and stuff.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| It was pretty complicated in the Netherlands. I had to pay a
| few thousand Euro to a notary and do a lot of paperwork. I've
| heard its worse in Germany.
|
| Then there are ongoing regulations like needing to have a
| resident director, so if you're a single-director company you
| can't move your personal residence even to another European
| country without shutting down your business and re-establishing
| it in your new country.
|
| Running it also changes from country to country, so if you move
| you have to speak to new accounts and lawyers in your new
| country about how tax and vat and other legalities work.
|
| In theory, this would let you do all of that once, hopefully
| all online and in a simpler and faster way. Then it should also
| be easier to hire and sell to all EU countries without doing a
| complicated dance of employment regulations and VAT compliance.
|
| That would be ideal anyway. Not sure if or when we'll get
| there.
| MadsRC wrote:
| Last I heard of it this was proposed as a directive as opposed to
| regulation, meaning every single member state would have to
| interpret it and create their own national implementation. Just
| like with GDPR.
|
| So 27 individual implementations of this, as opposed to the
| current 27 different implementations of how to incorporate and
| assign equity?
|
| Seems... silly?
|
| I'm all for making it more attractive to create startups in the
| EU... But I don't think a directive is the right way
| pshirshov wrote:
| Yes, it's in the works.
|
| Probably in just 3 to 5 years they could open a working group to
| outline an agenda for a committee which would prepare blueprints
| of the primary proposals.
| jcfrei wrote:
| This is exactly how its going to go. But the reason is not lazy
| bureaucrats but that a lot of countries fear they will lose out
| on taxes from corporations currently domiciled in their
| country. Of course another big source of friction is different
| labour laws in different countries. And there's no way these
| are going to be touched. And of course banks will also oppose
| the unified capital market because they fear losing fees from
| their domestic customers to better banks in other countries.
| kristoff_it wrote:
| I would love to be able to setup in Europe a non-profit
| equivalent to the Zig Software Foundation.
|
| I haven't looked too deeply into it, but my understanding is that
| it's not possible to create an equivalent corporation in Italy
| (where I reside) nor the rest of Europe.
|
| I would love to be proven wrong though.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > I haven't looked too deeply into it, but my understanding is
| that it's not possible to create an equivalent corporation in
| Italy (where I reside) nor the rest of Europe.
|
| You certainly did not look deep enough. ;)
|
| Ask Mr Google about gGmbH in Germany, for example.
|
| Honestly, I would be incredibly surprised if every single
| European country does not already have a non-profit structure.
|
| In addition, do not forget that in some countries you might
| also have the option of being non-profit not through legal-form
| (e.g. gGmbH in Germany) but via your articles of association,
| i.e. you set up a "standard" company and then formally declare
| it a non-profit. This is something your friendly local company
| lawyer would be need to help with as it requires the correct
| words to be drafted into your articles if you want e.g. the tax
| authorities to correctly recognise your status.
| kristoff_it wrote:
| Sure we have non profit companies also in Europe, the
| question if it's possible to create one to support an Open
| Source project, and which tax benefits donors can get.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > the question if it's possible to create one to support an
| Open Source project, and which tax benefits donors can get.
|
| As the old saying goes ... what has that got to do with the
| price of eggs ?
|
| A non-profit is a non-profit, doesn't matter if you are
| supporting Open Source or the community homeless.
|
| Same goes for donors. A donation is a donation.
|
| Codeberg e.v. (a.k.a. Forgejo) is one example that comes to
| mind, but I'm sure there are many others.
| kristoff_it wrote:
| My experience with the US tax system is that you need to
| get approval to get non-profit status, and more in
| general I do think this has something to do with the
| price of eggs in the sense that you should obviously be
| prevented from being able to setup a non-profit company
| if what you're doing has nothing charitable about it.
|
| I made the mistake of leaving this unsaid, but 501c3 in
| the US also means that the company is tax exempt, which
| is the actual concrete thing I was implicitly asking
| about.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > My experience with the US tax system is that you need
| to get approval to get non-profit status,
|
| I think in the majority of European cases you don't need
| prior approval. The UK is most likely the biggest
| exception where you can become either a non-profit or a
| charity. And if you want to become a charity in the UK,
| then yes there are more hoops to jump thorugh including
| approval from Charity Commission.
|
| But for Germany for example, you can just go setup a
| gGmbH which is simply a non-profit/charitable form of the
| standard GmbH. The only difference is what you put in
| your articles of association and how you register with
| the tax authorities, but you don't need prior
| authorisation for either, you just apply for the status
| with the tax authorities post-formation.
|
| Whether non-profit or charity you get tax exemption on
| both in Europe. The only difference is in the donor
| experience in some places (e.g. in the UK to get a
| personal tax break you have to donate to a charity, not a
| non-profit).
|
| But as above, I think the UK is the exception to the
| rule, I suspect in most EU countries it is closer to
| being non-profit == charity with no differentiation.
| kristoff_it wrote:
| I see, thank you for the info!
| nottorp wrote:
| > with a single and simple set of rules that will apply
| seamlessly all over our Union
|
| For one, I'm worried about what simple means. Likely something
| that will not make it as cheap to operate in every EU country,
| but make it as expensive to do that.
|
| Also, whatever the EU commission/council/whatever they call
| themselves in order to not call themselves government decides has
| to be translated into local legislation by all member countries.
| So it will get twisted in 27 different ways, some of them
| incompatible. Also 9 of the 27 will take years to finish the
| process.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > For one, I'm worried about what simple means. Likely
| something that will not make it as cheap to operate in every EU
| country, but make it as expensive to do that.
|
| I mean, if that's the case, no-one will use that structure.
|
| In general, having a single set of rules makes things cheaper.
| That is the whole basis of standardisation.
|
| > Also 9 of the 27 will take years to finish the process.
|
| You're thinking of directives. I'd assume this will be a
| regulation (quick guide to the differences here:
| https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/law...
| )
| nottorp wrote:
| > quick guide to the differences here
|
| They're trying so hard to not call themselves a government
| that they renamed everything so it doesn't sound like what a
| government does. Maybe they should start with fixing that...
|
| For the record i am in the EU and I think the EU is generally
| a good thing. Doesn't mean the
| "commisioners/ministers/whatever" couldn't use a few kicks to
| bring them more down to earth.
| a_ba wrote:
| Maybe the implementation will be challenging in one aspect or
| another but are there any reasons why you would you rather keep
| the current patchwork?
| pu_pe wrote:
| Excellent idea. The rules should be the same throughout Europe.
| However, on the official site (https://www.eu-inc.org/) I see the
| following line:
|
| Local taxes & employment
|
| I guess there is hardly any incentive to open a company in, say,
| Sweden vs Ireland then?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I mean, Denmark used to have LLC's and outlawed them some years
| ago (a thing that my accountant said, paraphrasing "look at all
| these thieving lawyers getting rich"), so this will mean that
| LLC's would be allowed again in Denmark?
|
| It seems somehow untrustworthy this >Our entrepreneurs, the
| innovative companies, will be able to register a company in any
| Member State within 48 hours - fully online.
|
| which sounds like not everyone will be allowed to do this? or is
| it "our" like European is our.
| kvgr wrote:
| Local Taxes... the issue with EU is the taxes and cost of labour.
| hanspagel wrote:
| If I understand correctly, the plan is to add a virtual state
| to address this.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's not the issue. If your business is dependent on slave
| labor and offloading your externalities on the society to make
| a profit it simply means your business should not exist.
|
| 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 wrote:
| > If your business is dependent on slave labor
|
| 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 wrote:
| EU doesn't actually have power to tax people, each
| government does its own taxation. They come up with
| agreements like minimum tax levels to prevent things like
| pretending to be in Ireland to avoid taxes in France but
| that's about it.
|
| 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 wrote:
| The assumption that a company can pay US tax rates while
| selling into the EU is perhaps one that should be
| questioned, like the ability to pay Chinese tax rates while
| selling into the US.
|
| (see Apple Ireland)
| kvgr wrote:
| Cost of labour i meant work taxation. You can see the waste
| everywhere. We could have half income tax, half social
| security and half health. Instead of taking 50% you your
| income. We could give 25%. And have more to boost the economy
| or save for future. EU is in slow death. Dying out, pyramid
| scheme retirement system mostly.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that. Elon Musk and Trump promised
| something of this sort, created the DOGE department and
| ended up not saving anything despite claiming to uncover
| waste.
|
| > 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.
| kvgr wrote:
| Well the slovak goverment alone stole billions of euros.
| Stole. Imagine if we didnt have to pay all the farm
| subsidies to keep 5 goats in mountains. Or to pay hungary
| for lookout towers in the middle of nowhere.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Sound like you should go after the Slovak government
| kvgr wrote:
| Well, isn't the EU supposed to watch out for this? Taxe
| frauds with VAT are a big deal. And nothing gets done.
| But people making peanuts will get taxed to the tits...
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > the issue with EU is the taxes and cost of labour.
|
| 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 wrote:
| > 450 million and counting people would still prefer to live
| and work in the EU than anywhere else
|
| majority of population of any given country doesn't emigrate
| ever, even inside EU where it would be extremely easy
| mrtksn wrote:
| But evidence shows that they do emigrate in mass when
| there's a reason, it's one of the core issues of the last
| decade and the reason why fascists gained power all over
| the world. If fact its the reason why masked people in USA
| are hunting down immigrants.
|
| 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 wrote:
| > But evidence shows that they do emigrate in mass when
| there's a reason
|
| 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 wrote:
| > majority of population of any given country doesn't
| emigrate ever, even inside EU where it would be extremely
| easy
|
| 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 wrote:
| > Because unlike the US, we don't speak the same
| language.
|
| 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 wrote:
| Yes, they might, but in practice and with the exception
| of multinational corporations and some start-ups,
| everyone speaks their own language. And it's all fun and
| games that you can speak english in restaurants, cafes,
| train stations and the like, and then when you want to
| find a job in an EU country you get hit with "do you
| speak our language? no? ah, we're sorry then."
|
| There's a big difference between being a tourist in
| Europe and actually living here.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| Well, if you insist on not learning a non-English
| European language, last time I checked Ireland was still
| in the EU and they speak English.
|
| 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 wrote:
| Common language works for employment and business, but
| then you go to government bureau (or want to fill
| government form) and they will insist on official
| language.
|
| That is why english as secondary official language would
| be beneficial.
| kvgr wrote:
| Listen i live in europe. But the amount of money wasted is
| huge.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| California's taxes and cost of labor combined are surely up
| there.
|
| 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_ wrote:
| Neither of which are actually an issue - companies earn money
| after all. Nobody complains that SF engineers earn (and thus
| cost) six figures.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Labour is much more expensive in the USA, and other taxes are
| very comparable. And the USA is the startup capital of the
| world.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Labor cost has many aspects. One big and key difference
| between the EU and the US is that due to socialist policies
| in the EU, it is much much harder to fire people when the
| business takes a downturn. And this is why companies are not
| that eager to hire as fast as needed because it is very hard
| for them to downsize.
|
| 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 wrote:
| I don't know about other countries but e.g. in germany the
| law all but forces you to fire higher performing people
| before lower performing folks, with additional protections
| for especially unproductive employees. And that's for when
| your business is sufficiently struggling to justify layoffs
| under the law.
|
| The US hire-and-fire approach is then the other extreme.
|
| The optimal amount of worker protection is somewhere in-
| between.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The optimal amount of protection provided by businesses
| is none. Employees are like any other costs, that may
| need to change based on supply and demand.
|
| 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 wrote:
| In practice you can hire people for at least 6 months in
| Europe on a "fire-at-will" contract. But yes, you're
| probably right. Down-sizing is not a problem in Europe, but
| you can't easily choose which people you want to let go,
| which is a problem.
| atmosx wrote:
| I haven't come across a single list of problem from business
| orgs that lists EU or local taxes, even if particularly high
| (California, Canada?), as a problem.
|
| 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 wrote:
| Every list of problems I see from economists of all brands
| explaining why e.g. the UK has such poor economic performance
| and such a severe cost of living crisis mention the
| complexity and scale of taxation in the country first as a
| barrier to economic growth and cause of inflation.
| eclat wrote:
| While that's also true, the EU varies widely. The tax wedge is
| very low in places like Czechia or Lithuania and very high in
| France and Germany. If you add other European countries you get
| some of the lowest taxes on earth in places like the Isle of
| Man or Switzerland.
|
| Having said that, the lack of proper integration is a huge
| problem, like imposing tarrifs of over 100% on ourselves.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| EU's strength is in diversity, and von der Leyen is set on
| killing that.
|
| US tech companies won not because EU is diverse, but because they
| had access to more money and could undermine all competition by
| dumping prices.
|
| Even before Google, there was Microsoft and it's tacit acceptance
| of "piracy".
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > EU's strength is in diversity, and von der Leyen is set on
| killing that.
|
| I feel like it's important to specify "diversity" and not just
| use it as a catch-all. I don't believe the strength of the EU
| is in diversity of how companies are implemented and run across
| the union, it's the diversity of culture, mindset and people
| that is the strength, and that can be represented inside
| companies, even if the way of setting up, running and investing
| in companies would be the same across the union.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Diversity of rules also. And a sane amount of inefficiency
| and contradictions.
|
| That's how we will build a truly resilient system.
|
| Don't forget that the most efficient state was the Third
| Reich, closely followed by the Soviet Union.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| There is a search box at the bottom of every HN page ;)
|
| Already being discussed:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703877
| embedding-shape wrote:
| The way I check for duplicates is to just try to submit it. If
| it's a duplicate, it'll count as an upvote to the existing one,
| otherwise I end up submitting it, it's a win-win :)
|
| 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.
| nhatcher wrote:
| I submitted that link. In all fairness the link in this post is
| more accurate. I'm glad to see people are interested. Let's see
| where all this goes.
| petcat wrote:
| I always heard that the issue with startup investment in Europe
| was the general lack of capital investors willing to take Hail
| Mary risks on founders with a wild idea and maybe little
| experience. The market is far too risk-averse for a grassroots
| early-stage startup scene.
|
| How would this organization address that fundamental
| psychological block?
| throwaway132448 wrote:
| This is basically just a meme at this point.
| closewith wrote:
| I think a big issue is that Europeans who want to invest in
| early stage VC do so in the States, because everything is
| geared towards entrepreneurial success there. Changing the
| business environment across the EU is necessary but definitely
| not sufficient to kick start the VC-backed startup scene in the
| EU.
| throwaway132448 wrote:
| I think the big issue is that this is what Americans want to
| believe because it reinforces their exceptionalism. And of
| course there are Europeans who would choose to believe it
| because it absolves them of failure.
| pornel wrote:
| It used to be the same for founders. If you wanted to raise,
| you went to SV. SV used to be the Schelling point for
| funding.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > big issue is that Europeans who want to invest in early
| stage VC do so in the States
|
| 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.
| closewith wrote:
| This seems like a tautology - the VCs you've worked with in
| Europe invest in Europe.
|
| However, most HNW Europeans who invest in early stage do
| not invest in the EU and therefore you will not have worked
| with them.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > This seems like a tautology - the VCs you've worked
| with in Europe invest in Europe.
|
| 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?
| closewith wrote:
| > 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?
|
| 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.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > because the capital deployment from EU HNW is
| overwhelming deployed outside the bloc, largely in the
| US.
|
| 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.
| closewith wrote:
| As politely as possible, your experience is simply wrong,
| I'm afraid to say. US angel/seed round investing by EU-
| resident HNWs alone exceeds all angel/seed investing in
| the EU, by quite some margin.
|
| I'm actually quite curious who it is you think are people
| in the EU deploying capital in early stage investments,
| as you appear to be very confident?
|
| I suspect maybe you're thinking of people investing in EU
| startups to avail of the myriad tax incentives like
| Germany's INVEST, Ireland's EIIS, etc. If so, then that
| represents a tiny fraction of capital invested by EU HNWs
| in early stage companies.
| gchokov wrote:
| Not true. I am an LP in a number of Vc funds.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| How is that in the US right now though? Years ago there was a
| wacky startup of the week on HN raising X amount of funds,
| nowadays it feels like there's... nothing. Or it's just
| underreported on HN. Or the billions that funded a hundred
| startups have all gone down the AI drain.
| causalscience wrote:
| I suspect HN just got bored with reporting on stupid
| startups.
| closewith wrote:
| I acted as a technical advisor on a raise in Q2 2025 and saw
| figures from the EI Market Research Centre that Q1 Series As
| & Bs totalled ~$35 BN USD vs ~EUR4.5 for the EU as a bloc, so
| very roughly an order of magnitude greater. 2025 was
| considered a mid year for US VC capital deployment but a good
| year for the EU.
| skrebbel wrote:
| It wouldn't. I read this as "we gotta try _something_ " but
| let's be honest, no amount of work on incorporation rules or
| employee options schemes or whatever they make up next, is
| going to meaningfully change the culture and attitude of
| European capital markets.
|
| 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.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| It's not going to change overnight, no. But it's an important
| step.
|
| "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...
| truegoric wrote:
| The incentives change once you get access to the entire EU
| market, either diminishing the risk or increasing the
| attractiveness of the the market to the point of that risk
| becoming acceptable
| luplex wrote:
| this is not the only blocker for European startup success. We
| need to address each blocker separately.
|
| 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.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > How would this organization address that fundamental
| psychological block?
|
| 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.
| gyanchawdhary wrote:
| UK founder here in cybersecurity. I've bootstrapped and exited
| twice.
|
| 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.
| r_lee wrote:
| "proper" probably means backed by a member state, founder is
| a former gov worker, product is being co-developed by a local
| university, is based on academic research, founding team has
| PhDs and has 15 large enterprise customers lined up
| troupo wrote:
| > The market is far too risk-averse for a grassroots early-
| stage startup scene.
|
| 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".
| petcat wrote:
| > no expectation for companies to succeed or to turn in
| profit in the US, and hasn't been for over a decade.
|
| It's been a lot longer than a decade. The initial dot-com
| boom was nearly _30 years ago_.
|
| It's very much institutionalized at this point. And the US
| continues to produce the most valuable companies in the
| world.
| troupo wrote:
| The US continues to produce "most valuable companies" by
| the absolute non-sensical value called "market share" and
| "market capitalization".
|
| Menawhile almost every single of those "valuable" companies
| are either actively harmful, or keep offloading the effects
| of their operations onto society.
|
| Prime example: Uber lost 20 billion dollars, will never get
| them back, and offloaded all the issues of gig workers on
| workers themselves, or the society. It's "value" (market
| cap) is "175 billion dollars" (it's not)
| fhennig wrote:
| I don't think the VC-based start-up system with pure profit in
| mind and an exit at some point and then who-cares-about-the-
| product is something I want to see more of.
| veltas wrote:
| It says "Pan-European" everywhere, but would this include the UK?
| enedil wrote:
| It says "Pan-European" everywhere, but would this include
| Belarus?
| veltas wrote:
| That's what "Pan-European" would imply, actually. Similar to
| what "Pan-American" means for the Americas.
| graemep wrote:
| Its obviously EU - so not the UK, or Norway or Switzerland or
| Russia...
|
| 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.
| veltas wrote:
| It's not obvious to me at all, that's why I asked, precisely
| because of the use of "pan-European".
| eclat wrote:
| EEA applicability might be less obvious than you imply
| however.
| graemep wrote:
| The integrated taxes would be a very big step for the EEA,
| so would common company law and governance for these
| entities.
|
| That said I think the headline proposal (single entity type
| and single registrar) is not important. The UK and (AFAIK)
| the US have few practical difficulties with multiple
| registrars and variations between jurisdictions.
| dspillett wrote:
| As the headline statements say "... EU-level ..." rather than
| European, unless the smaller print explicitly mentions non-EU
| countries such as the UK I would assume that we aren't
| included.
| 1317 wrote:
| "one europe" except for all the other bits of europe
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Indeed, except for the bits of Europe which chose not to be
| part of the main part of Europe. That's how it works.
|
| And by "it" we mean both "free choice to be part of the
| union or not" and "legal jurisdictions".
| veltas wrote:
| I don't think you know how continents work. It's a bit
| like saying Canada isn't "North American".
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| It is pretty common, when discussing matters of law and
| business - not geography, to read "Europe" as "the union
| of Europe" and not "the continent of Europe".
|
| 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.
| veltas wrote:
| I think you can see from this thread that there is a lot
| more ambiguity when talking of "Europe", and also
| pushback against using "Europe" to mean "EU". It's not
| obvious, that's why I asked the question. I'm not stupid
| but just living in a different context to you,
| apparently, and have reasons to push back against this
| misuse of the word "European".
|
| 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.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I don't agree that it's "misuse". it's a use, a common
| use. No pushback is called for. You asked a question
| about the title that was answered in the title - "EU-INC"
| means "EU" in this case. It's clear from context, and if
| that fails from the article. Others have said the same.
|
| I don't "live in that context", I'm aware of it can can
| use it when appropriate.
| amunozo wrote:
| Well, isn't it the same for America? America is more than
| the US. I know the name Americas is used, but that is more
| like an afterthought.
| marliechiller wrote:
| I dont think this is the same. If you started referring
| to North America as a name for the USA then it would be
| equal
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| no :)
| pjc50 wrote:
| No, but the UK already has easy company formation.
| veltas wrote:
| Formation might be easy but the laws, regulations and
| planning required to do almost anything are extremely
| burdensome.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Glad to finally see 28th getting more traction, I was thinking
| about it just the other day. Personally, I'd love for EU to
| introduce more institutions that cut at member state sovereignty
| in favor of tighter integration. What comes to mind immediately
| is a 28th regime for employment and personal taxes, so companies
| don't have to resort to workarounds like employee of record or
| fake "contractors". It seems that EU late binds making big
| decisions until all options collapse, current events will
| probably result in more push for federalization overall.
| neximo64 wrote:
| Can't work legally speaking. There has to be a single sponsoring
| member state. Just sadly how the EU is designed.
|
| The only way would be to copy it individually so it is the same
| in each member state which breaks the purpose of it.
| riffraff wrote:
| this proposal exists under the umbrella of the 28th regime[0]
| idea, as per their FAQ.
|
| Which.. would be a good idea, but I am not holding my breath
| for it to happen in the next 10 years.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_regime
| dathinab wrote:
| this isn't fully true
|
| 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > anti capital flight laws are a thing
|
| Hmm - any examples of this applying intra-EU? That feels like
| a violation of the free movement of banking services.
| dathinab wrote:
| > violation of the free movement of banking services
|
| Isn't the same as freely moving the jurisdiction under
| which a company exist.
|
| It also mostly applies to cash/legal tender but most
| wealthy peoples wealth is only in small amounts in cash.
|
| Technically relevant laws are also often not classified as
| "capital flight" laws per-se, but are very close to it.
|
| E.g. in Germany there is a "Wegzugsteuer" (~moving away
| from Germany Tax), which only applies to "hidden/unrealized
| reserves". When you leave Germany (~for good, kinda, it's
| complicated) the tax treats them as if you sold them, i.e.
| you have to any tax you would have to pay if you had sold
| them. "Hidden reserves" include stuff like you owning more
| then 1% of a company, certain investment founds, crypto
| currency, etc.. So while it's not a capital flight law as
| it doesn't affect cash (weather digital or physical) it is
| very similar to it.
|
| (clarifications: yes in EU crypto currency is not a legal
| tender, i.e. it's treated more like gold. You still can use
| them to buy things as you can buy things based on an
| exchange of goods if all involved parties agree to it.
| Similar for a lot of the things covered by the law it's
| possible to sell them for very low taxes under the right
| circumstances, so if you don't move very spontaneously you
| have a lot of ways to largely reduce this tax.)
| vladms wrote:
| > - Standardized investment documents
|
| 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).
| dathinab wrote:
| the proposal itself, and my comments, say no tax will be on
| country basis, that doesn't block standardized stock
| options. It just means that on monetization events taxes
| you pay on stocks might differ (they anyway will depending
| on where you live independent on anything on the company
| side).
| vladms wrote:
| I hope someone talked with lawyers that know what can be
| done.
|
| I would love a (more) unified system (tax, rules, etc.).
| Multiple organizations/think-tanks recommended more
| unified systems for the EU on this topics.
|
| The problem is if it does not fall under the EU
| competences it will be hard to implement at that level.
| To quote:
|
| > While the businesses and objectives targeted by the
| 28th regime are specified to some extent, it is unclear
| which firms would specifically have access to it, and
| which aspects of the business code would be covered. The
| competences of the EU are likely to constitute boundaries
| in this respect.
|
| source: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRI
| E/2025/7792...
|
| In a way, it's like programming. The difficult part are
| the exceptions, corner cases or unplanned interactions.
| Countries are very reluctant to give up control over some
| topics (tax being one of them) and they also have
| lawyers.
|
| I welcome any help entrepreneurs can receive. But after
| trying it a couple of times (software stuff, might be a
| specific case) I personally didn't find the rules for
| creation/tax were that of a problem, compared to the
| requirements that in many other instances I felt were
| imposed to the newly/newlish formed enterprise (ex: want
| to apply to a project? you have to have existed for 3
| years; want that subsidy? you need to show us you are
| having X partners) to lower the risk for the existing
| (public and private) organizations.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| And if the authors of the proposal had thought a bit more about
| their idea, they would have realized that the situation is
| exactly the same in the USA:
|
| 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.
| causalscience wrote:
| If the EU is saying "we'll make it work", replying "can't work
| because that's how the EU is designed" doesn't seem like an
| intelligent response.
| bux93 wrote:
| Weird. Seems to work for Airbus, Allianz, BASF, E.ON,
| Fresenius, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (and its subsidiary
| Dior), SAP, Schneider Electric, TotalEnergies, Unibail-Rodamco-
| Westfield and Vonovia.
|
| 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
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Maybe the task is to make the changes to get this to work
| legally speaking.
| dbbk wrote:
| They've already said it'll be the 28th state
| miyuru wrote:
| I am also looking for a stripe atlas alternative.
|
| Having a EU based one will be great.
|
| previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25006716
| 3rodents wrote:
| Germany is your problem. If you're open to looking outside
| Germany, there are many options. You can open a U.K. company
| same day, an Estonian company with e-residency in a couple of
| days. Germany is uniquely nightmarish.
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| That's not good advice . If he lives in Germany he should
| incorporate a German company otherwise he will run into big
| Issues .
| yafra7 wrote:
| It's not EU wide but in France we have Legalplace
| (https://www.legalplace.fr/) to create a company online
| quickly.
| eclat wrote:
| The problem isn't incorporation - it's having accountants in
| your jurisdiction familiar with the structure. You can
| incorporate in the UK for PS50 instantly but you might have
| trouble finding an accountant in Italy that is willing to sort
| your accounts out.
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| It's never an good idea especially in an EU country to
| incorporate outside your personal jurisdiction especially as
| single founder.
| notpushkin wrote:
| So, a privately held SE?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea
| layer8 wrote:
| Maybe read
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea#Formation.
| dbuxton wrote:
| Of all the challenges you face as a startup, the legal entity you
| choose is possibly the least consequential. 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.
|
| 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!
| arka2147483647 wrote:
| > Delaware C-corp, UK Ltd is OK too
|
| Neither of which is in EU, which is exactly the point. Should
| be an EU one which is usable...
| veltas wrote:
| The title says "One Europe" and "Pan-European".
| arka2147483647 wrote:
| This is a EU initiative. Confusingly, EU is often called
| Europe in spoken/non-official speech. Sort of the same way
| it is said that Washington does something, when it is the
| US gov doing something.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > investors understand how the legals work (Delaware C-corp, UK
| Ltd is OK too)
|
| 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.
| veltas wrote:
| > This is clearly about EU and Europe
|
| UK is in Europe.
| karavelov wrote:
| I am sorry to break the news, but UK is not in EU, so
| registering a company in UK is of the same effect as
| registering it anywhere else outside EU
| veltas wrote:
| However it is in Europe.
| alibarber wrote:
| And yet I'm not seeing an awful lot of advantage of
| registering in the EU then if this campaign has to exist
| - clearly there's a big enough friction to registering /
| running a company within the EU itself.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Fair, probably shouldn't have added "Europe" in there,
| removed it.
|
| 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.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I started a limited company in Spain about 15 years ago. Just
| the 48h online is huge. It took maybe 15-20 days and visits to
| the notary, etc. (notaries are usually not available next day,
| for example). I think Estonia and UK have similar quick ways,
| but if this is as quick it is definitely an advantage over the
| status quo. It will affect companies without investors as well,
| which adds up.
| pjc50 wrote:
| You also need portability. As I understand it there's no
| problem with having a Delaware corp but all your staff and
| operations being in California, for example. I do not believe
| this is the case all across the EU! And some localities can
| have quite onerous formation requirements for no good reason
| (anything involving notaries, for example - 19th century
| solution to 19th century problems).
| tcldr wrote:
| > Of all the challenges you face as a startup, the legal entity
| you choose is possibly the least consequential.
|
| 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.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >The ultimate aim is to create a new truly European company
| structure. We call it EU Inc., with a single and simple set of
| rules that will apply seamlessly all over our Union.
|
| I hope this is an indication that the Commission proposal will be
| for a Regulation and not a Directive.
|
| I still don't understand why it's been such a contentious
| decision to pick between the two.
| fkarg wrote:
| This would help a lot. Many European startups are strongly local
| (also in talent search), because while moving is simple, share
| distribution and ownership structures are anything but, and
| investors usually don't want to bother with local regulation on
| that they don't even know.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There is nothing hindering European startups to raise money from
| all over Europe. Except that Europeans hate to invest in real
| businesses and love investing in real estate.
|
| 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.
| thinkindie wrote:
| There might be a cultural component, but as a matter of fact if
| you want to expand to other countries within Europe you will
| have to create a local entity or hire through an EOR. EU-inc
| will solve this.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > They should ask themselves why European entrepreneurs should
| create their startup in Europe instead of in America.
|
| 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.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You don't need to physically move to America to create your
| startup there.
| troupo wrote:
| > American startups and businesses get investor money from all
| over the world, including from Europe.
|
| 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.
| vladms wrote:
| > In Europe it is hostility mostly all the way, from banks to
| regulators to governments, and so on
|
| 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.
| shevy-java wrote:
| In principle this is a good idea.
|
| 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.
| atmosx wrote:
| IMO this is half-measures. You wanna a strong EU? Merge the
| salaries and living standards from the north the south and west
| to east. Germans workers shouldn't blackmailed by auto-motive
| companies leaving for Poland unless they accept smaller salaries
| and vice-versa polish workers shouldn't emigrate to Germany to
| find a decent salary, pension, etc.
|
| 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...)
| elric wrote:
| > It's very simple.
|
| Is it? I doubt it. There isn't a large country on earth where
| the salaries don't differ across regions.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| It's probably the most complex and impossible to solve take,
| it's not even true in the US or any other place in the world.
|
| 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?
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is the least simple thing. Countries aren't even flattened
| out within themselves, in the EU or US.
| troupo wrote:
| Ah yes. The simple thing of fixing all societal issues.
| blitzar wrote:
| You wanna a strong US? Merge the salaries and living standards
| from New York to Flint Michigan.
|
| Didn't think so.
| academia_hack wrote:
| It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or SA
| in some EU countries. It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_
| an LLC and dissolve it. Huge amount of risk and cost on founders
| and a huge distraction from running a business.
|
| 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").
| egorfine wrote:
| > a company should be able to register in x days
|
| 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".
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Companies are treated like persons legally and while I'm sure
| there is too much bureaucracy in many places, I'm also sure
| that there are important documents that should be required.
|
| 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.
| egorfine wrote:
| There is a huge spectrum between "require impossible
| documentation" and "require none". Germany and EU are
| heading towards the former.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Literally the whole effort this submission, is about is
| moving a tiny step towards "require none" but not go all
| the way, compared to how it is today. You chose the wrong
| submission to comment that on, in any "new regulation in
| EU" submission that might have been appropriate, but this
| move is quite the opposite of what you say is happening.
| egorfine wrote:
| > this move
|
| My point is that this move will not happen. I don't
| believe EU can overcome a huge and extremely motivated
| army of bureaucrats.
| philipallstar wrote:
| This isn't an EU move, is it?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > This isn't an EU move, is it?
|
| What, exactly, do you mean with "EU move"?
|
| I guess technically it's a "European Commission" move,
| but overall it's a European and EU move, unless "move"
| has some specific meaning to you.
| Bewelge wrote:
| German here. That's not true. What crazy documentation do
| you require? An ID, proof of residence, and a business
| plan? (edit: you don't even need a business plan)
|
| 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.
| jagrsw wrote:
| I don't know much about corporations, but why business
| plans are needed at all? I mean, for EU citizens.
|
| bank (loans), immigration and investors can be
| interested, but their interests are not covering every
| corporation out there.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| It's basically a proof of "most basic effort" that you're
| serious. You could probably note down some stuff on a
| single A4 and get it approved, it doesn't have to be a 40
| page dossier.
|
| Kind of like fizzbuzz, just something really simple and
| most basic to get rid of the "easy scams" and so on.
|
| Edit: So "easy scams" are probably the wrong word, I
| initially wrote "riffraff" because in my mothertoungue
| that isn't so... disparaging, but what I meant was that
| it's used as "bare minimum filter" basically.
| zdragnar wrote:
| That doesn't really sound like a barrier to the easy
| scams at all. It just sounds like something someone once
| thought would be a good idea and now everyone has to do
| it because that's the process.
| philipallstar wrote:
| How would this get rid of easy scams?
| whatevaa wrote:
| ChatGPT, give me a convincing sounding business plans for
| starting a bussiness in Germany.
|
| Done.
| Xylakant wrote:
| There's absolutely no need to have a business plan to
| start a company in Germany. You articles of incorporation
| and they state a company purpose, but this can be
| something as simple as "do IT consulting".
|
| Obviously, having a credible plan helps if you try to
| convince banks to loan you money or any such thing, but
| the act of registering a company requires no such thing.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > ... and a business plan?
|
| Why would the government need a business plan?
|
| It's none of their business what you want to do with your
| company besides a general description as "software
| development" or "consulting services" or whatever.
| Bewelge wrote:
| Actually I think I might be mistaken that you are even
| required to make a business plan. It's listed as one of
| the steps on the states portal about founding. But it
| goes on to say that it's not technically required, just
| highlights its importance.
|
| https://www.existenzgruendungsportal.de/Navigation/DE/So-
| geh...
| logifail wrote:
| > It's none of their business what you want to do with
| your company
|
| There are plenty of European member states that want the
| ability to control very precisely what you do with "your
| company". You want to call yourself "a software
| engineer"? Ooops...
|
| In the EU it seems particularly the German-speaking
| countries are borderline obsessed with a) titles, and b)
| whom may use those titles. See, for instance,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34096464
| dpc050505 wrote:
| Several sectors of economic activities have the potential
| for atrocious externalities and it's absolutely the
| government's business to know about these and make sure
| that you're following regulation to minimize these
| externalities. When you make your employees the
| neighbours sick (or straight up kill them) it's an
| enormous failure on the part of government. It's easy to
| be oblivious to that when you only think about software.
|
| Exhibit A:
| https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/battery-facility-
| acc...
| logifail wrote:
| Except it seems that it's often _large_ companies -
| typically those with _lots of lawyers_ - who seem to get
| away with what I can only describe as "corporate
| misdeads" most regularly.
|
| "Following regulation" sounds great until it's revealed
| that corporate lobbyists have been helping (co-)write
| regulations to make sure that fair competition is
| quashed.
| eidjdj174 wrote:
| It's interesting how people can apply thinking like
| "there are problems, it's not perfect, better not to try"
| to government, but also be pro starting businesses
| dcrazy wrote:
| > business plan
|
| This is the problem. Let me pivot. Let me fail. Let my
| investors (including myself) lose time and money in bad
| ideas.
|
| All the bureaucracy in the world didn't stop Wirecard,
| but it sure as heck demotivated people from trying
| something new in Germany.
| Xylakant wrote:
| There is no problem, because no business plan is
| required.
| petre wrote:
| Previous HN discussion about setting up a GmbH.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39959368
| direwolf20 wrote:
| > For example to make sure that a company can be held
| responsible when it breaks the law.
|
| This is the reason Germany hates small companies. Germany
| wants you to be a sole trader with no liability shield.
|
| Some people hack the system by registering a company in
| another EU state such as Lithuania.
| erispoe wrote:
| That's not a hack, if you operate the entity from
| Germany, it must be registered in Germany. It's often
| touted as a tax loophole, but it's not. Tax authorities
| do not care about you unless you actually make money,
| then they will come after you.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Which law says it must be registered in Germany?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It must be seated where the business happens for
| compliance with tax laws. But you may have a French
| S.a.r.l. in Germany and thus fall under their company law
| (with impact on publication responsibilities, company
| governance etc.)
|
| While for some cases there is room for abuse (like Amazon
| Kindle eBooks are sold to Germany by a company situated
| in Luxembourg, while only selling via amazon.de to
| audience with German residency) However my employer is a
| Dutch B.V. with headquarters in Germany, thus they avoid
| having to form a board with works council representatives
| as a German GmbH (or AG) of comparable size would
| require.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Specifically, it must be seated where the principal
| management of the business occurs.
|
| So if the executives and board meetings and books and
| records are strategically located in one country and most
| of the business operations are in a second, it's valid
| and probably even required for the business to have its
| tax residence in the first country rather than the
| second.
|
| It may very well have a permanent establishment and
| therefore some tax obligations in the second country, but
| that's different from the second country being the
| primary tax residence.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > However my employer is a Dutch B.V. with headquarters
| in Germany, thus they avoid having to form a board with
| works council representatives as a German GmbH (or AG) of
| comparable size would require.
|
| Damn, that's a pretty sleazy business practice. How do
| you feel about it? That would be a nice loophole to
| close.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It's not that easy if you want European integration and
| support the idea of "freedom of settlement" also for
| companies, which to me makes sense and it is known that
| some countries try to pull companies to register in their
| legislation with sometimes improper means. I would prefer
| to focus on Irish taxation, which extracts value produced
| elsewhere to Irish benefit.
|
| Workers rights are being unified, but that's a long
| complex process, as work cultures vary a lot and most
| companies fear German-style code termination, while it's
| an uphill battle to weaken it in Germany, thus it remains
| in national law's responsibility.
|
| And to be clear:
|
| a) works council exists with all normal rights, only they
| don't have board seats, which can be quite powerful,
| especially in public companies where one might form
| alliances with independent share holders. In the case
| here it's a 100% subsidiary of an American corporation,
| so they get their will one way or the other, board
| members may only delay
|
| b) I am somewhat priviligedge as I am no simply
| replicable conveyor belt worker, but somewhat specialized
| engineer
|
| c) I'm currently on garden leave period after 18 years in
| the company (incl acquisitions) due to a reduction, where
| works council produced a quite nice exit for me, so the
| only time _I_ needed it, it worked well. But then I am
| somewhat privileged over others, making it hard to
| generalize.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Would the liability shield not generally apply to a
| foreign entity registered in Germany? Sure there may be
| special rules for non-compliance with specific tax
| obligations, but I'm talking about for general liability
| for other purposes, like a contract signed by the entity
| where no personal guarantee was given, or a harm caused
| by the corporation where the owner was not personally
| involved or negligent in causing the harm.
| amluto wrote:
| In most (all?) US states, you can just start a company. You
| file a form, usually online, with the state, and you ask
| the IRS, online, for an ID number called an EIN.
| Technically you have a valid company after just step 1, but
| good luck getting any sort of bank account without doing
| step 2.
|
| If you want to employ people, you need to file gratuitously
| obnoxious paperwork, but it's still automatic.
|
| What's the actual problem? Why should it be harder?
|
| Some states like California dislike small businesses in
| that they charge $800/year. But that's pretty much it.
| nicbou wrote:
| > In Germany, the government recently decided that some
| minor applications to local governments must be answered
| within X days or else are automatically approved.
|
| I believe it was just a crazy idea that was submitted
| recently.
|
| The closest real thing is 75 VwGO which requires a decision
| in 3 months. The immigration office has been failing to
| meet that requirement for years with few consequences,
| because enforcing that right is expensive and takes even
| longer.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > For example to make sure that a company can be held
| responsible when it breaks the law.
|
| In general this has nothing to do with incorporation
| documents.
|
| If a company unintentionally causes a large amount of
| damages, the company is going to get wiped out, but then
| you're just having the judge order the bank to transfer the
| company's assets to the victims. The owners of the company
| aren't particularly relevant except insofar as they now own
| a company whose value has been zeroed out, and they might
| be the ones to show up in court to argue against that being
| what should happen.
|
| If the people at a company _intentionally_ cause a large
| amount of damages, the _corporation_ is irrelevant. If your
| "corporation" is in the business of stealing catalytic
| converters and the police come to arrest you, the person
| with the sawzall in their hands is going to jail, and if
| that person was hired to do it they're going to be offered
| a deal to testify against the person who hired them etc.
| Pointing to your articles of incorporation at that point
| isn't going to save you. That isn't what LLCs do, actual
| criminal enterprises will frequently have not listed the
| true principals on the documents anyway, and the government
| is going to try to prosecute the perpetrators rather than
| the patsies on the documents.
|
| There is no real point in making this a burden for honest
| people. If they're honest then it doesn't matter. If
| they're not honest then you'd be a fool to trust what they
| wrote on a form anyway.
| egorfine wrote:
| > My worry is that the end result will require
|
| 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?!
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| You know that EU bureaucrats do what each country want them
| to do right?
|
| 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6481969.stm
| egorfine wrote:
| > You know that EU bureaucrats do what each country want
| them to do right?
|
| 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.
| hvb2 wrote:
| You said
|
| > 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
| egorfine wrote:
| > hard pressed to think of a more regulated country than
| Germany.
|
| 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.
| yownie wrote:
| >Which is just German culture as much as food is Italian.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250227-is-there-no-
| such...
| kakacik wrote:
| Bureaucracy is a beast with its own life, it doesn't care
| what regular people want. In fact most folks'
| requirements go directly against objectives of this
| beast, since people want it as small and as weak as
| possible, while beast need to be fed and feels internally
| it needs to be strong. Anything not related to gaining or
| maintaining strength is antagonist.
| bombcar wrote:
| And even if that's not the case, the group of
| "entrepreneurs" is so small compared to the voting
| population at large, that they won't even _notice_ if
| they crush it entirely into paste.
| egorfine wrote:
| Exactly this. Common folks like "tough on crime" postures
| of politicians and never consider nuance, which is
| everything. Yeah, crush them, those white-collared
| fraudsters.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| It's the same in Belgium where it takes weeks to start a
| business, but as a French said to me some time ago, it's
| better than in France.
| p0pularopinion wrote:
| > Certainly no one wants any of this. Yet somehow the
| rules pile up.
|
| Haha. May I introduce you to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_Reform_Movement
|
| German precision was not only about engineering, it has
| always also been about having a precisely defined
| bureaucratic process for everything.
|
| Also, people never explicitly say they do want more
| bureaucracy. More often, the bureaucracy is more often a
| result of what people don't want to. They may want more
| roads, but they don't want them near *their* home, thus
| they fight for something to prevent construction there.
| They may want this subsidy, but they most certainly do
| not want person X to get it as well.
| egorfine wrote:
| > precisely defined bureaucratic process for everything
|
| Which is extremely similar to communism. As in: perfect
| in theory, impossible in real life.
| te_chris wrote:
| Truly, this is one of the greatest losses of the UK leaving.
| For both parties. Advising EU startups on where to incorporate
| that isn't London could be so much simpler.
| whateverboat wrote:
| What about Luxembourg?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| If you have to setup a company today, and want the easiest
| path to EU-wide SaaS, probably Estonia is the way to go,
| very easy for EU citizens (don't know how the experience
| would be from outside, if it's even possible).
| psychoslave wrote:
| Interesting https://eurosaasedge.substack.com/p/the-
| estonian-saas-formul...
| MrJobbo wrote:
| Too bad that Estonia won't exist after 2027...Russia will
| gobble it up alongside Latvia and Lithuania.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, such a shame Estonia isn't in NATO nor the defense
| clauses of the EU, so they're sitting there all alone at
| the border...
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| It seems easy enough for US residents as well:
| https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/
|
| Checking the requirements, it seems to me that any "first
| world" citizen would encounter a low barrier for entry,
| with exceptions for Russians ("second world" citizens).
| belter wrote:
| Avoid Luxembourg like the plague unless you are a company
| like Amazon. And even them are making a massive mistake
| form a governance and risk management point of view of
| being based there. But they have their tax deal...
| codingcodingboy wrote:
| Can you explain why?
| belter wrote:
| Where should I start... :-)
|
| - They are optimized for Big funds, Holding structures
| and Multinationals If you are a bootstrapper, or small
| company or any early stage startup, the ecosystem works
| against you.
|
| - Setup costs are absurdly high if you include Notary
| around plus possibly Lawyer, Bank onboarding plus
| accounting you are looking at burning EUR10k to EUR20k
| easily before making a cent.
|
| - The scourge of the state Fonctionnaires. Untouchables
| and incredibly well paid state employees. One told me
| would take care of my long delayed VAT returns... AFTER
| they would return from their long summer holidays in
| Switzerland ...
|
| - It only works if you have some special deal like the
| famous Mr Marius Kohl also known as Monsieur Ruling used
| to do... "Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies'
| Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg"
| https://www.icij.org/investigations/luxembourg-
| leaks/leaked-...
|
| - Banks will treat you like a criminal by default and
| assume, you are laundering money, or hiding taxes and you
| a compliance risk. They have extreme KYC requirements,
| and do account freezes for trivial reasons.
|
| - Accounting is rigid, expensive, and slow. Taxes are not
| low in practice. On paper, it all looks good, but in
| reality they have the Corporate tax and municipal tax.
| Many complex withholding rules and limited deductions
| unless structured perfectly.
|
| - The legal system is slow and formal. Everything takes a
| lot of time and a LOT of paperwork with more costly
| intermediaries. Small changes like directors, statutes
| will force Notary, Formal filings, Delays.
|
| - The ecosystem is completely closed and relationship
| driven and the few startups like Talkwalker and Doctena
| are coming and financed from local families. Luxembourg
| runs completely on local networks and specially
| reputation over merit. If you are not local, from
| finance, or law or government circles you are invisible.
|
| - Incredibly promiscuous relationships between the banks,
| law and legal professions, with a permanent revolving
| door between local companies and banks management and
| government officials. We are talking about less than just
| a few hundred people. This means Luxembourgeois families
| with long term historical relationships. Good luck on any
| legal or business dispute between you...and a local, who
| is a cousin from the local judge or government
| official....
|
| I have had the chance of setting up and running companies
| in many countries. Specifically for Europe, currently I
| would suggest as two best options right now: Estonia and
| the Netherlands. Avoid France, Luxembourg and definitely
| avoid Germany.
| logicchains wrote:
| >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.
|
| That sounds like a really good use for AI.
| regularfry wrote:
| "It is a mistake to optimise something that should not exist
| in the first place." - Elon Musk (apparently, although I
| would be astonished if Deming or Ohno hadn't said something
| similar)
| amunozo wrote:
| I agree, but us individuals cannot change the system that
| easily. But we can use these tools.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >That sounds like a really good use for AI.
|
| No, it is not a really good use for a word prediction engine.
| miki123211 wrote:
| In Europe, there are two parallel realities which coexist,
| have some influence over one another, but are ultimately
| somewhat separate.
|
| There's the real reality, and then there's the reality as
| it is perceived by the bureaucratic apparatus, the "upside
| down." It's important to realize that everything in the
| "upside down" must be consistent with the rest of that
| reality, but not necessarily with what actually happened in
| the real world. The closer your activities get to the
| government and government scrutiny, the more true that
| description is.
|
| Did John have to go somewhere on Monday and finish his work
| on Saturday instead? He could have filed for time off and
| then gotten special permission to work on Saturday, but
| that's far too many forms with far too many signatures.
| It's just easier to pretend (on all documents, yes all of
| them, the "upside down" demands consistency) that he did in
| fact work on Monday and did not work on saturday. Americans
| call it fraud, Europeans call it Tuesday.
| trueismywork wrote:
| This is the truth.
| trueismywork wrote:
| Everything else is much more expensive so AI is actually
| the cheapest and only viable option. I mmm
| amunozo wrote:
| It is, it is what I used in my PhD for dealing with the
| Spanish bureaucracy and university.
| mminer237 wrote:
| You mean to process it or to make up stuff to satisfy the
| regulators?
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > Huge amount of risk and cost on founders
|
| 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > 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?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| There really is no reason for it to be longer, more expensive,
| and more complicated than what exists today in, say, the UK
| where you can do it all online for about PS20 (or is it PS50
| now?) and complete in a matter of hours.
|
| 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.
| baby wrote:
| Having a startup in the US is a huge mess due to all the states
| and taxes, if Europe can make everything digital AND easier,
| it's a no brainer for us to move our company there.
| bluecalm wrote:
| >>Having a startup in the US is a huge mess due to all the
| states and taxes,
|
| 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.
| niemandhier wrote:
| At least in Germany, this is not correct. You do not have
| to pay that unless: You earned more than EUR100,000 this
| year or more than EUR25,000 last year.
| alibarber wrote:
| But there is no threshold for cross-border selling in the
| EU.
|
| Fine if you're selling widgets at a market in Germany -
| but if you sell software abroad, make sure you're
| following [each] one of the 27 VAT codes correctly.
|
| (From what I understand - would love this to be wrong)
| yujzgzc wrote:
| Following US sales tax has way more complexity. In my
| county alone there are many different rates depending on
| the city in which the sale is made. Even just finding out
| authoritatively which jurisdiction to pay taxes to is
| nontrivial, practically impossible to solve without
| dedicated software.
| friendzis wrote:
| > Fine if you're selling widgets at a market in Germany -
| but if you sell software abroad, make sure you're
| following [each] one of the 27 VAT codes correctly.
|
| Yes.
|
| > But there is no threshold for cross-border selling in
| the EU.
|
| Kinda, but misinterprets the VAT itself.
|
| Basically, VAT is paid at the point of sale and local
| thresholds apply.
| bluecalm wrote:
| >>Kinda, but misinterprets the VAT itself.
|
| >>Basically, VAT is paid at the point of sale and local
| thresholds apply.
|
| The threshold is 10k EUR (total sales to EU). The point
| of sale in case of software/electronic services is the
| country of residence of your customer. You need to
| collect two pieces evidence of that location, usually
| billing address and IP. If those don't match (your
| customer has used a VPN for example) you need a 3rd
| piece.
|
| One Stop Shop helps with it (when I was starting my
| company it didn't exist and predecessor VAT MOSS was just
| being introduced and no one knew how to comply with it)
| but you still need to charge local VAT rates and report
| quarterly.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| I think they're referring to this https://europa.eu/youre
| urope/citizens/consumers/shopping/vat...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| If dealing with VAT is a large problem for your business
| today, running a business might just not be for you, it's
| very trivial today to get it right and there are even
| platforms who basically does all the "hard" work for you.
| But even without those 3rd party solutions, I think the
| complexity is vastly oversold, it's relatively easy to get
| right compared to other regulations. Maybe I'm just EU-
| damaged already though, YMMV.
| philipallstar wrote:
| Dealing with anything from day 1 is harder than doing it
| later when you have predictable money and growth.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Hence most countries has a threshold for when you need to
| charge the country-specific VAT and let you use the local
| one until you reach there. It differs by the country as
| far as I know.
| bluecalm wrote:
| >>If dealing with VAT is a large problem for your
| business today
|
| It's not a problem for me today. It was a big problem
| when I had no revenue, needed to do all the paperwork,
| meet ridiculous local accounting requirements connected
| to selling software in a different currency than my local
| one, write code, setup licensing, shipping the software
| to the clients etc.
|
| It was a major source of stress and sleepless nights for
| me.
|
| >>But even without those 3rd party solutions, I think the
| complexity is vastly oversold, it's relatively easy to
| get right compared to other regulations. Maybe I'm just
| EU-damaged already though, YMMV.
|
| It's easy when you have done it once and know the
| process. It's not so easy when you need to understand if
| your product meets a definition of an electronic service
| or something else, when accountants you are meeting don't
| know how to setup VAT-MOSS thing because it's still rare
| or when you need to add your tax authority about
| something and their reply is that they don't know so you
| need to write an official inquire (that requires a
| lawyer) so you can get your answer in a few months.
|
| When I was setting a new company in another country it
| was easier for me because I already knew how the process
| work and I could hire a competent accountant before the
| new company had any revenue. It wasn't so simple when I
| had 0 capital and just wanted to ship software to see if
| people want to buy it.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > It's not a problem for me today. It was a big problem
| when I had no revenue, needed to do all the paperwork,
| meet ridiculous local accounting requirements connected
| to selling software in a different currency than my local
| one, write code, setup licensing, shipping the software
| to the clients etc.
|
| Since this depends mostly on what country you are in/you
| are setting up the country in, what specific country was
| this? Because it's not the same everywhere, and by the
| sounds of it, is a lot more complicated than most other
| EU countries. Germany is famously bureaucratic, as just
| one example, and differs wildly from the type of
| experience you'll have in Sweden.
|
| > It wasn't so simple when I had 0 capital and just
| wanted to ship software to see if people want to buy it.
|
| Most people, accountants or not, won't tell you this, but
| you're usually fine starting to charge people and running
| a business "unofficially" for a couple of months without
| having to pay any fines or anything when you finally
| "regularize" your situation. Many accountants have dealt
| with this sort of setup countless of times too. But
| again, people won't advice you to take this route, but it
| is one option if you just wanna ship software and see if
| people want to buy it. If no one buys it, just don't tell
| anyone :) Unless you're doing five figures or more in
| revenue, no one will mind.
| bluecalm wrote:
| For me it's very stressful to not comply with the
| regulation on purpose hoping I am too small to not get
| punished by the authority. It would be easier to just
| ignore the regulation. I get this makes me not well
| predisposed to do business in EU. Thank you for your
| advice.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > It would be easier to just ignore the regulation.
|
| Well, in your case, completely ignoring something rather
| than doing it later sounds like it would be more
| stressful for you, if the problem is not complying? I'm
| don't think wanting to comply with regulation makes you
| "not well predisposed to do business in EU" and I'm not
| sure where you get that from.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Why would moving to the EU mean you don't have to deal with
| states and taxes? Would you abandon the US market completely?
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > Having a startup in the US is a huge mess due to all the
| states and taxes
|
| Not really, there are services like Avalara that give you the
| exact tax amount you need to collect from your customers once
| they fill in the shipping address.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > Having a startup in the US is a huge mess due to all the
| states and taxes
|
| Not really there are literally companies as a service that
| take care of everything for next to nothing. It's actually
| kinda crazy how you can be up and running in under a week in
| the USA.
| xattt wrote:
| > a complete application should be no longer than y pages
|
| The monkey's finger curls. All contract text is now sized at 2
| points.
| miki123211 wrote:
| I think what's even more important is that _the costs for
| founding and maintaining such an LLC should scale with revenue,
| including scaling to 0_.
|
| 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.
| trueismywork wrote:
| Startups but definition have no revenue.
|
| Its also a chicken and egg problem. Having a revenue means
| having a company and vice versa. Unless you're in very old
| fields, which explains lack of new tech companies in Germany
| friendzis wrote:
| > Its also a chicken and egg problem. Having a revenue
| means having a company and vice versa.
|
| How would you pay your employees making the product/service
| that will eventually bring in the revenue? That's what "own
| capital" is for.
|
| Typical LLC/JSC will have at the very least one _employee_
| -- the CEO -- and that will bring one minimum wage worth of
| expenses (sort of). There are legal entity types that can
| function without employees with shareholders sort of self-
| employing, but those are not universal across the EU.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| In the US, it is common for a small startup company to
| have no employees. Your role and title with a company is
| separate from your official employment status. This is
| where concepts like "sweat equity" come from. You can be
| an owner and work on a company without being an employee
| or receiving any compensation. Creating a company in the
| US comes with no real obligations to do something with
| it.
|
| This is beneficial. It allows small companies to
| bootstrap without incurring the complexity and cost of
| having employees until they have enough revenue or
| capital to justify that expense.
| sib wrote:
| >> Startups but definition have no revenue
|
| "Having no revenue" is definitely not the definition of a
| startup. There are plenty of startups with revenue (and
| even profit!)
| dv_dt wrote:
| If they were being pragmatic about it, the more universal
| healthcare systems offered by many EU nations should be a
| massive advantage for startups vs nations like the US, but
| the wrong regulations around company operations negates it or
| worse.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Social security gets paid on wages. Revenue doesn't play into
| it.
| buzer wrote:
| Not quite true. In Finland YEL (yrittajan elakevakuutus,
| pension insurance for entrepreneurs) is required and it's
| based on estimated value of the entrepreneur's work input.
| Even if you pay yourself 0 euros your YEL income is likely
| higher. The models that insurance companies use take
| revenue in account.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| In Portugal (for example) is is mandatory for an Lda
| (limited company) to have an employee, and they must be
| paid minimum monthly amount. In practice this means a few
| hundred euros a month go to the government in taxes. Then
| on top of that is another hundred or so in accountancy
| fees.
| seec wrote:
| They won't be able to solve the problem. The only reason all
| those roadblocks exist is to control/regulate everything in a
| way to ensure the maximum possible taxation. At the same time,
| bureaucrats get to justify their existence, pretending to do
| meaningful work while they only take from productive people.
|
| 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.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Yeah, since there's lots of countries and some are very dynamic
| and modern, maybe they could act as early adopters. But don't
| stop there: if it works for the early adopters, others could
| also apply their lessons. For example Estonia is often
| mentioned in electronic government etc.
| torginus wrote:
| Is this a true problem in EU (or indeed anywhere)? I don't
| think starting a company is the bottleneck, it's mostly the
| inordinate amount of regulations one has to comply with, as
| well as the strenuous laws around letting workers go, while
| making people work as contractors being also frowned upon.
|
| I'm not sure how any one these is going to change.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Those things are as designed. This is good. We don't want
| "at-will" employment like in the US. We want to have rights
| as employees. We want to have social welfare. We want our
| free healthcare.
|
| It's not a bug it's a feature. We don't want an American-
| style society. Current developments should be enough reason
| to understand why (and the understanding that Trump's backers
| are part of a huge group of people on the low side of the
| wealth gap). If anything we have too much of that already
| hence the rise of extreme right here too. It's a result of
| the austerity movements after the 2007 crash.
|
| But this new regulation doesn't invalidate employee rights
| no. It's just about registration and incorporation.
| WarmWash wrote:
| The EU has a borderline stagnant economy, couldn't defend
| itself from Russia, facing population collapse, totally
| whiffed on the tech scene explosion in the last 25 years,
| now also missing out on AI. European social obligations are
| expensive, yet nobody seems to really want to stress about
| creating new sources of wealth.
|
| At some point Europeans need to look in the mirror, and
| understand that the last 30 years has been a vacation, and
| even worse, there is now a whole generation who was born on
| vacation and thinks it's the norm.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| We can defend ourselves, it's just that the US didn't
| want a too-powerful Europe until trump. In particular
| nuclear. They heavily pushed against that.
|
| We'll have to scale this up now but it is not a big
| problem.
|
| Population collapse is a good thing. We already have too
| many people in this world, causing environmental and
| housing issues. We can't keep ever growing as humanity,
| stabilisation or even a reduction is very good. It'll
| cause some short term cash flow and elderly care issues
| but we'll deal with that.
|
| And AI so far is more of a hollow promise and hype. It's
| not a race, the way America is approaching it it's
| inevitably going to lead to a bubble collapse.
| codingcodingboy wrote:
| _" In particular nuclear. They heavily pushed against
| that."_
|
| Saw this yesterday related to nuclear deterrence in
| Italy.
|
| https://x.com/NichoConcu/status/2012882747434426605
| WarmWash wrote:
| Europe didn't want a too powerful Europe until Trump.
|
| Are you going to look me in the eyes and say that you,
| and your general Euro brethren, have been pushing for a
| greater defense budget at the expense of greater social
| program spending for the last 30 years.
|
| Please, please make that statement. C'mon...
|
| This is the same Europe that thought it would be a good
| idea to buy gas from Russia, the same Europe that thought
| it would be a good idea to have a fully American tech
| stack, and the same Europe (whose largest company is an
| automotive one) that is importing cheap Chinese cars.
|
| _Anything_ to avoid having to leave their 30 year
| vacation.
| usrnm wrote:
| Refusal to learn and change, even if it means learning from
| people you disagree with, is simply arrogant and stupid.
| The US is the biggest economy in the world with the
| strongest tech sector in the world, they are obviously
| doing _something_ right. And many personal accounts from
| people doing business in the EU in this thread show that
| the EU is doing at least some things wrong.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| We don't care only about money. We're doing pretty great,
| we have some issues like housing cost but the US has
| those too. I'm happy with my life and I don't feel like
| there's something missing that having more money would
| fix. Less employment and welfare rights would cause a lot
| of worry and uncertainty though.
|
| It's not all about economy and getting ever more more
| more like the US. I'm pretty happy living here and I
| would never move to the US. In fact right now I wouldn't
| even visit it but hopefully the status quo doesn't last
| forever.
|
| And it's not all about business. But about people, the
| employees.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > And it's not all about business. But about people, the
| employees.
|
| Everyone here is missing this critical point.
|
| The USA does not value human life as having value itself
| outside of what someone can contribute economically.
| Everyone talking about GDP, and "missing out" on AI,
| tech, etc.
|
| Life has value outside of economic contributions. It's
| not a matter of "missing out" it's different priorities
| and philosophies of how to structure a human society.
|
| Endless growth is not sustainable, and the late stage
| capitalism happening in the US right now is not
| sustainable. Why would anyone want to model themselves
| after it, seeing all of its failures and the enormous
| wealth gap it has created?
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Free healthcare and social welfare I'm in agreement on. But
| why does at will employment need to conflict with that? The
| problems of wage values, food and shelter, and healthcare
| can be handled completely independently of employment. If
| someone feels it is too easy to do nothing without
| requiring employment to gain some of those benefits, you
| can have the government as an employer of last resort. But
| making it easy for anyone and everyone to start and
| maintain a business is a societal good. We are asking why
| doesn't a person have guaranteed employment, when we should
| ask why do they need it. If a person was let go and could
| with empty pockets be assured of food shelter and
| healthcare, and also be able to start their own company on
| the way home from being let go, that is the society I'd
| want to live in.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| At will employment is something we'll never accept here.
| We don't need the threat of having nothing from one day
| to the next.
|
| It's good for billionaires but not for actual people that
| matter.
|
| Running a business is not something everyone should have
| to do anyway. It's good if it's hard. That keeps the
| cowboys at bay.
|
| I would never ever want to own a business. I don't need
| that uncertainty. I just want a stable wage.
|
| The prevailing idea here is that the US is best at
| everything and its model will always win. But in reality
| it's been in decline for a long time and it's become a
| pretty toxic society I don't want to see here in Europe.
| Trump is only a symptom of that but not the cause. The
| real cause is a top layer (which many HN commenters are
| part of) that is getting ever richer and a huge
| disadvantaged mass that is stagnant or declining. Their
| anger is what drives MAGA. Also called late stage
| capitalism. Going even more capitalist is not the way to
| fix or prevent that.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I agree with everything you said except for the cowboys
| bit. I don't think business owners should be a separate
| class of people. It shouldn't be unusual to meet people
| that own their business. I don't want to do it, it would
| stress me. But we can let random people try random ideas
| without having to start out wealthy, and we shouldn't
| have the failure of that business and the loss of those
| employees' jobs, risk the health and well-being of those
| let go. If getting fired just meant you had to do with
| fewer luxuries until you found another, we wouldn't need
| to protect those jobs to the detriment of a business. By
| tying employment to safety and well-being, we complicate
| the whole matter.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| By cowboys I mean the people starting businesses left
| right and center and just collapsing them when they don't
| get the desired result straight away. E.g. US venture
| capitalism. I think it's a really good thing that we
| don't have that here in Europe. Sure it prevents the
| googles and metas but those would never have made it that
| big here anyway because we regulate big businesses before
| they become uncontrollable. And now that we are breaking
| off ties with the US we will have to build our own
| anyway, just with sustainable and fair business models.
|
| Sure we can get society to pick up the tab but the
| problem is that those cowboys are even more incentivised
| to be risky then. There should be a penalty for them when
| it goes wrong.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Most people in the US own stocks the USA is "fixing" this
| by making everyone part of the owner class. Especially
| now with childhood investment accounts by the federal
| government (the "trump accounts").
| ragall wrote:
| Various places in Europe already have what amounts to at-
| will employment. There are exemptions for companies under
| a certain number of employees (e.g. 25 in Italy). There's
| a wide use of fixed-term contracts (6/12 months). Many
| work through agencies, which means they can be "fired"
| with a few weeks' notice.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Depends a lot on what country, but I think you'll find
| that the ratio of full-time employee vs contractor/at-
| will employee in most European countries will look very
| different from how that ratio looks like in the US (or
| other similar countries).
| ragall wrote:
| Sure, but that's very different from saying that
| Europeans have would never accept it. It's already
| happening quite extensively, though not as much as in the
| US. Europe seems to be 20-40 years behind the US in
| various economic and social developments, but it's not
| immune from them.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I don't read "we'll never accept here" as "it's be
| impossible", more like "we won't base our entire economy
| on that, it's not what the average person wants", because
| obviously Europe has various staffing companies already,
| and if you add a tiny bit of nuance into what they said,
| I'd agree with it too.
|
| > Europe seems to be 20-40 years behind the US in various
| economic and social developments
|
| That's one perspective, another is that US is 20-40 years
| behind Europe because the average person can barely
| afford to stay alive in the US right now, which is much
| less of a problem in Europe. But it all depends on what
| you value, I'm not gonna say one is more "correct" than
| the other, we all have our preferences and so on.
| ragall wrote:
| > But it all depends on what you value, I'm not gonna say
| one is more "correct" than the other, we all have our
| preferences and so on.
|
| I wasn't talking about values. Yours or mines are largely
| irrelevant.
|
| 40 years ago, much of the US economy was made of stable
| jobs. Contingent jobs used to be few, labour unions used
| to be much stronger. Europe is under the same economic
| pressures as the US, and it's slowly trending in the same
| direction, just with 20-40 years of delay.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > That's one perspective, another is that US is 20-40
| years behind Europe [...]
|
| The US's HDI (0.938) is comparable to New Zealand and
| Liechtenstein [0], and significantly above Austria's
| (0.930), France's (0.920), and Italy's (0.915) [0], and
| the EU's HDI is itself 0.915 [1] - this puts the EU
| roughly in the same position as the US almost 16-17 years
| ago [2] despite both having a similar population.
|
| That said, once you break the 0.900 range, the
| differences are essentially cosmetic so Europeans or
| Americans saying either are significantly behind the
| other from a developmental metrics perspective is dumb
| and deflects from issues that exist in both the US and
| Europe.
|
| [0] - https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-
| insights#/ranks
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Europe
| an_Union
|
| [2] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/USA/?leve
| ls=1+4&ye...
| notahacker wrote:
| Differences once you break the 0.9 range are more
| noticeable at the bottom end, particularly in the context
| of the OP's claim about people in the US "struggling to
| stay alive". There's also an "inequality weighted" HDI
| (accessible from your HDR link above by drilling down to
| the individual country data) which puts the US a fair way
| behind many of the EU countries the sheer weight of its
| per capita GDP puts it ahead of (on that index the US is
| even marginally worse than some of the wealthier Eastern
| Bloc countries, but interestingly on dead level pegging
| with France for the last decade)
| alephnerd wrote:
| Even then the US is comparable to France - the only
| European country that comes even remotely close to
| America's power projection capabilities - and
| significantly above Italy, a fellow G7 member and large
| EU member that also has power projections capabilities.
|
| The only large European countries with a significantly
| better iHDI are Germany and the UK.
|
| All this does is justify the fact that most EU member
| states have taken advantage of the peace dividend at the
| expense of countries that have heavily invested in
| defense capabilities like the US, France, and Italy which
| fuels anti-European sentiment that turned into the
| current diplomatic crisis.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Not really. Fixed-term contracts can not be used
| indefinitely. A worker must be permanently hired after
| the first extension. Agencies can not be used
| indefinitely, and also, the agency is required to support
| the employee after the client lets them go. So the
| company just pays to shift that responsibility but the
| responsibility towards the employee is there. A company
| is also not allowed to make an employee 'self-employed'
| by making them start their own company. They must always
| have multiple clients, if they have just one the
| government will consider it permanent employment with all
| strings attached and will apply all relevant restrictions
| and taxation retroactively.
|
| I'm just talking about holland here but all over europe
| the conditions are similar.
|
| All the exceptions you mention were just sly ways the
| companies have tried to circumvent their responsibilities
| and the law has caught up with regulations to make those
| impossible or at least impractical.
|
| And there are some exceptions yes. But those are mostly
| for in-between gig jobs. Not for stuff people make a
| career out of.
|
| Of course there are also exceptions with easy firing for
| things like gross negligence. Though the employee always
| has the ability to countersue.
| ragall wrote:
| > A worker must be permanently hired after the first
| extension.
|
| After the first extension the worker will not be hired
| again.
|
| > Agencies can not be used indefinitely
|
| Yes they can.
|
| > A company is also not allowed to make an employee
| 'self-employed' by making them start their own company.
|
| Wrong. I've seen this happening personally.
|
| > I'm just talking about holland here but all over europe
| the conditions are similar.
|
| You're talking about what you _think_ is happening in
| Netherlands, and the conditions in many places in the
| rest of Europe are not like that.
|
| > But those are mostly for in-between gig jobs. Not for
| stuff people make a career out of.
|
| Not yet.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > The prevailing idea here is that the US is best at
| everything and its model will always win. But in reality
| it's been in decline for a long time and it's become a
| pretty toxic society I don't want to see here in Europe.
|
| If the USA is in decline you must consider Europe a
| failed state at this point then? Nearly every wealth
| inequality issue is worse in Europe then the USA. Youth
| unemployment has become a permanent fixture of society,
| your housing affordability crisis makes the USA look
| really good, most of your nations can't afford to keep
| social services at current levels and will be cutting
| them over the next decade, and you need to actually spend
| on military now that's just going to happen faster.
|
| It's kinda funny by trying to avoid "late stage
| capitalism" the EU is going to force themselves into it
| as quality of life and global relevance continue to fade.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| The EU is not a state.
|
| And no, wealth inequality is much higher in the US:
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/wealth-in... . And those are averages, we don't
| have people making 100.000x more than others.
|
| We also have wayyy less violent crime:
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/violent-c... , and much less people in prison
| per capita
|
| LGBTQ+ rights are way better covered here (with the
| exception of a couple countries that should really be
| booted out of the EU). Also really important for me.
|
| We're doing pretty good, we will have some challenges
| going forward but that's always the case. Military
| equipment is something that we're now buying a lot from
| the US where prices are really high, and once we move
| that to European vendors we can get a lot more for the
| same money (this is similar to how Russia manages to have
| so much military power on a country with a GDP similar to
| Italy: they make it themselves with their own purchasing
| power).
|
| The one challenge to the EU is not to fall into the
| austerity trap as they did in 2007 though. And we don't
| need so much. I don't need or want a car, a big TV, daily
| takeaway coffees etc. Less consumerism is also a good
| thing.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > And no, wealth inequality is much higher in the US
|
| Absolute numbers don't matter as I was saying the issues
| caused by wealth inequality such as housing crisis are
| much worse in the EU.
|
| > We also have wayyy less violent crime
|
| Fair but I will say ours is very concentrated to specific
| areas / demographics so the average person rarely has to
| deal with that.
|
| > LGBTQ+ rights are way better covered here (with the
| exception of a couple countries that should really be
| booted out of the EU). Also really important for me.
|
| So they are worse?
|
| > Military equipment is something that we're now buying a
| lot from the US where prices are really high, and once we
| move that to European vendors we can get a lot more for
| the same money
|
| That's a two decade plus plan that hasn't even started
| and is already running into issues. Doesn't help that the
| EU needs weapons now not in 20 years.
|
| > And we don't need so much. I don't need or want a car,
| a big TV, daily takeaway coffees etc.
|
| It's one thing not to want it's another to not to be able
| to have.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| It really matters which state you look at. Wealth
| inequality, gdp per capita, and median wage are all
| better in several eu members than in the US, and that
| still holds if you factor in housing and cpi in general.
| There are other states where that is really not the case.
| Its mostly the Scandinavian countries outperforming the
| us on these metrics and they are relatively low
| population in comparison so its kind of an odd one to
| make. If the goal is total gdp, who cares about the
| median wage, then the us/china plan does make more sense,
| but neither of those plans work without the other
| existing and cooperating.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > We don't want "at-will" employment like in the US.
|
| Only lazy people want to be employed for life somewhere.
| All the benefits, no responsibility.
| socksy wrote:
| Good thing then that there's a range of options between
| being let go immediately for no reason and companies
| being forced to employ bad employees for life.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yes and that's basically what we have in most of Europe.
|
| Only France really has a bit of the latter.
|
| You can get rid of employees. You just have to show to
| the court that is necessary. Circumstances depend on
| whether it's individual performance or business need etc.
|
| But the at will is very harsh and we don't want this
| here.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| AUstria (and especially Switzerland) has virtually at-
| will employment. No need to show anything to any court,
| just the notice period. Job security is virtually non
| existent.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| No, we still work. Just want some continuity. Not working
| for a company without direction chasing the latest fad
| and dumping everyone if it doesn't work out, but a good
| company with a decent business plan.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Then go be an entrepreneur and create a company with no
| risk of failing. And let us know how that works out for
| you.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| I don't want to be an entrepreneur. And it doesn't have
| to be riskless. Just to have a good business (plan).
|
| But this is the status quo in Europe. Companies are
| forced to take failure into account before they dive in
| deep, because it will cost them. Provide benefits for
| their employees, etc. This is good. Companies exist to
| provide jobs. Not only to make money for the owner and
| externalise all the negative effects on society.
|
| I just don't understand the desire to turn the EU into
| the US. If you like how business in the US works, just
| start your business there, not here. Meanwhile I as a
| worker would never consider moving there. This way we can
| both get what we want.
| xvokcarts wrote:
| > Companies exist to provide jobs. Not only to make money
| for the owner and externalise all the negative effects on
| society.
|
| I think it's safe to say that the one who starts
| something has the privilege to make the call on its
| purpose. And I'd bet most if not all people who start
| companies do so in order to make money for themselves,
| and providing jobs is a means to that end.
|
| So, if a company could make profit without employing a
| single person, it would still serve its purpose.
| cowl wrote:
| Is someone forcing you to work at a company chasing the
| latest fad? You go and choose the type of company you
| want. The keyword here being "Choice".
|
| There are plenty of workers that would not mind carring a
| little more risk in those companies for better pay, and
| those companies could offer better pay if not made to
| jump through loops.
|
| Classic Example is the "Consultant" contracts.
|
| Companies are paying through their nose to hire
| "consultants" because it's the easiest way they can try a
| new idea that might not work.
|
| Company A pays Company B 1k/day for that "consultant",
| Company B does not have enough capacity so gets that
| "Consultant" from Company C for 700/day. Company C does
| the same and gets the consultant from Company D for
| 500/Day. Company D actually employs the consultant and
| pays him 200/Day. In this whole useless chain build to
| avoid the "can not fire even if your projects doesn't
| work" Both Company A and the actual Employee are losing
| big, Both would be much better having a direct contract
| for 500/day with the understading that this might not
| work after all.
|
| Notice that for that Employee, stability is not there
| even now. yes he continues to be employed by Company D
| When Company A stops the contract but he is effectivly
| moved to another Contract with Company X. he is
| effectivly changing Jobs, new reposnsabilities, new
| collegues, new rules etc. only in the eyes of the state
| he is not changing jobs.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or
| SA in some EU countries.
|
| Totally.
|
| One of the biggest and most horrific aspect of it is the
| KYC/AML. We regularly read articles explaining that drugs are
| so out of hand that several EU countries, like Belgium, are
| becoming narco-states: these are front page, major newspaper,
| stories. We also read articles explaining that cash bills from
| petty drug dealing are "necessary for the underground economy
| of the poor oppressed people".
|
| Official numbers say 2% to 5% of the world's global GDP is tied
| to criminal activities.
|
| So major drug trafficking is ongoing and that money is
| definitely being laundered.
|
| Yet when regular people like myself want to open a company, the
| gates of the KYC/AML hell do open.
|
| Bureaucrats and many people at various institutions like banks,
| notary, etc. do believe that the KYC/AML meant to catch actual
| criminals is actually a greenlight to go full stasi-mode on
| everyone.
|
| Things go, literally, a bit like this:
|
| stasi agent: _" Source of funds: where do the 50 K EUR of
| capital come from?"_
|
| honest person: _" I sold at 600 EUR shares of Meta I bought at
| 60 EUR in 2015 (making that up), here's a printed copy of both
| the buy order at the bank in 2015 and the copy of the sell
| order, at the same bank, 10 years later."_
|
| stasi agent: _" Nice try! Where did the 5 K EUR you bought
| those Meta shares with in 2015 come from?"_.
|
| The above is, literally, happening. It happened to me. It
| happened to people I know.
|
| At one point I had no trace because I had to go so much back in
| time that the bank wouldn't give the proofs anymore: and it
| cost something insane like 25 EUR / month per account to get
| old infos. So for say four accounts we're talking 1 200 EUR per
| year to ask for old bank statements.
|
| I'll remind everyone that a principle in many EU countries is
| that if there is no suspicion of fraud there's a delay after
| which the IRSes _cannot_ legally go back. They have to prove
| that there 's potential fraud to be able to go back more than,
| e.g., 7 years.
|
| But the stasi-agents working in KYC/AML at banks, notary, etc.?
| They believe they have a mission to make regular's people life
| hell.
|
| Oh and a good one: you think it's bad that legitimate citizens
| to denounce illegals? You wanna me to tell you about the phone
| numbers the _governments_ put in place in many EU countries so
| that citizens can denounce other fellow citizens _" because
| they believe they're frauding the IRS"_? How's that one?
| Where's the outrage?
|
| In my native country of Belgium I heard that at least one in
| every four solo-preneur ("independant") / entrepreneur has been
| the subject of _at least_ one such denunciation.
|
| Stasi.
|
| Also totally counter-productive: when everybody is a suspect,
| nobody is.
|
| I see on LinkedIn people whoring their profiles to would be
| employers by boasting about how many SARs denunciations they
| made (Suspicious Activity Reports).
|
| Stasi agents.
|
| And then don't get me started on people who are just bitter and
| sour because, in the EU, they may be net 3 K to 5 K EUR a
| month, and yet are authorized to KYC / AML on people owning
| Porsche and Ferrari, hundreds of thousands or millions of EUR
| worth of equities/investements, expensive real estate, etc.
|
| These people cannot comprehend, in their own little minds,
| surrounded by people limited the same way they are, that there
| are people out there who are just _legitimately_ more succesful
| than they 'll ever be in life.
|
| Their bitterness and jealousy turns them into little stati
| agents.
|
| Bank menaced to not only not open my company's account but to
| close not just my account but also my wife's account. I had
| then to spend three weeks, full time, while my wife was on
| vacation (I sent her on vacation and stayed to produce the
| papers for the stasi), to produce a 49 pages (49 fucking pages)
| document full of proofs going back more than 10 years. Only to
| create a company and bring 50 K EUR in capital.
|
| Just _fuck_ this entire system.
|
| You simply cannot hate bureaucracy enough.
|
| > It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and
| dissolve it.
|
| It's some countries it's near mission impossible. A friend of
| mine who had the equivalent of a LLC in Belgium who was then
| acquired by an US company spent 10 years to close the belgian
| entity. And it's much worse than that: while they refuse to do
| what's necessary to close it, many taxes are due and keep on
| coming each year. But of course those did manage to close a
| company or who know someone who closed a company are going to
| say: _" I had no issue, so there's no issue"_.
|
| All of this really does feel like a dystopian bureaucratic
| nightmare, in the style of the Brazil movie. It'd be nice if
| more movies were produced in that genre for it's badly needed
| to at least be able to vent off with some well-deserved satire.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| As a reminder, KYC/AML is imposed by the USA on every other
| country in order to access the USD banking system, and the
| USA uses any excuse to cut off entities it doesn't like.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| All this "know your customer" stuff is fallout from 911. We
| in the US went bonkers as a result of 911 and what used to be
| tinfoil hat conspiracy thinking ended up becoming national
| policy.
| erispoe wrote:
| You don't need business plans and all that stuff. The problem
| in Germany for instance is that a GmbH needs 25k of capital +
| expensive notarization. These are the only two things that need
| improvement.
| Jean-Philipe wrote:
| Came here to say the same. Founding a company in Germany is
| way to complicated and expensive... same for dismantling a
| company. I don't understand why you need a notary for
| everything.
| rmoriz wrote:
| You can start an Unternehmergesellschaft (UG) within days
| with a template. However tax filing burdens will costs you
| around 2000EUR baseline a year without having a single Euro
| of revenue let alone profit.
| sschueller wrote:
| I agree on application costs to be less but I believe a company
| needs to bring some capital. In Switzerland you need to pony up
| 20k in startup capital for a GmbH or 100k for an AG (ignoring
| the 50k work around), it belongs to the company but guarantees
| some security for customers and vendors that you aren't just
| going to take their money and run.
|
| In Switzerland you don't even need to collect VAT until you
| make at least 100k a year so I find requiring some capital ok.
| jaggirs wrote:
| You can pony up however much money you want and show
| customers the founding document that says the amount the
| company was started with. I believe it's usually publically
| available even.
|
| Forcing certain minimum amounts is just arbitrary gatekeeping
| and prevents companies that don't need that 'trust' and don't
| have the money from being created.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Didn't Estonia solve this problem?
| stevenally wrote:
| In the USA California, Texas, Delaware etc all have different
| company registration and compliance processes. This has not
| damaged the business environment.
|
| It should be left to each EU country to decide how to manage
| their company compliance processes. Those companies can then
| easily trade all over the EU.
|
| You can easily set up a company in Ireland.
|
| The EU does not to over reach with one-size-fits-all
| regulations. That will eventually lead to it's dissolution. It
| needs to concentrate on maintaining a free trade area.
| lazide wrote:
| Each of those places (besides Delaware, kinda) has economies
| larger than a large chunk of the EU.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, we've realized that, that's why we keep iterating on
| the union :)
| lazide wrote:
| My point is rather than almost anything can be made
| smooth if you have enough $$ pointed at making it so. One
| of the biggest issues with small economies is that they
| don't have the capital spent to make it easy to do things
| yet; which is friction that helps keep them small.
| yencabulator wrote:
| This is so ridiculously contrary to a Northern European
| existence that it's just funny. US is ridiculously more
| bureaucratic with lots of back office papers shuffled
| around by humans. US tax filing is hard to even describe
| to someone who never lived there.
|
| Official procedures can be made smooth by valuing them
| being smooth.
| lazide wrote:
| You just pay. All the problems are known and have
| workarounds, it just involves money.
|
| That's my point.
|
| It doesn't have to be nice or clean or smooth, if there
| is a known solution which someone can just throw money
| at, at scale.
|
| The harder problem with these smaller countries and
| economies, is people haven't figured out how to do that
| yet. So you end up having to track down x or y random
| lawyer, then hope they don't screw you, etc.
| yencabulator wrote:
| That's a very American approach. Just enable a grift
| economy existing purely because the original thing was
| bad. The Nordic approach is to make the original thing
| better. The end result is less wasteful.
| lazide wrote:
| Also smaller. The 'waste' also counts towards GDP, as
| long as the money keeps moving.
|
| Lots of people have built homes and families off it.
|
| What really slows an economy down is when money stops
| moving.
| yencabulator wrote:
| That's an argument for U.S. healthcare insurance industry
| being a good thing. Uhh.. no?
| lazide wrote:
| It certainly pads a lot of people's wallets! Like
| anything, it's about what trade offs, when, by whom, etc.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > The 'waste' also counts towards GDP, as long as the
| money keeps moving.
|
| Honestly, that explains a lot. Vastly different
| perspective from what I'm used to, but useful insight
| into the US.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Has it been effective though? The EU used to have a
| bigger GDP than the USA in 2008 now the USA is over 50%
| larger. Member nations are still dragging their feet on
| doing much of anything in the Draghi report and it's
| unclear if that will ever change.
| bootsmann wrote:
| This is a commonly cited stat but it is mostly an
| exchange rate phenomenon that disappears when you adjust
| for purchase power. If you go by comparing GDP in dollars
| the EU recovered almost half this gap last year simply
| from the dollar dropping in value.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Has it been effective though?
|
| At what specifically?
|
| At preventing another European war? Up until very
| recently, pretty good. No more world wars as of yet, but
| 80 years has past since the last, everyone with memories
| of how horrible it was, are almost gone, so I guess we're
| building up to another one. I'm hoping that at least
| Europe sticks together if it gets down to it.
|
| I'm not sure why GDP is such an important indicator to
| you, it's just the value of goods and services, what
| purpose is that supposed to serve?
|
| USA keeps getting a larger GDP you say, yet the
| population at large seems to be getting poorer, education
| and health care gets worse, and people finding it harder
| and harder to find somewhere to live. So what good does a
| high GDP actually give you in the world today?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > USA keeps getting a larger GDP you say, yet the
| population at large seems to be getting poorer
|
| People in the US may be many things but poor is not one
| of them. The median household income is ~$85k and the
| median household lives somewhere pretty inexpensive. The
| amount of money Americans can afford to waste on things
| they don't need is unmatched.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| "Poor" isn't just "doesn't have N USD", purchasing power
| as just one example, matters so much more. But maybe it
| was a poor choice of words on my part, sorry.
| bootsmann wrote:
| Its almost impossible for a fund from Germany to invest in a
| company from France and vice-versa. It is a significant
| problem!
| roenxi wrote:
| That sounds like a significant problem ... for either the
| Germans or the French to resolve. The only thing stopping
| foreign investors is law enforcement officers telling them
| to stop. The Germans can, literally, just not do anything
| except enforce basic property laws and foreign investment
| would pour money in.
|
| I'm put in mind of US citizens who seem to be the lepers of
| international finance, often when I see prospectuses they
| have a lot of text on the the front saying "don't show this
| to anyone from the US" because they don't want to deal with
| the compliance costs of US law. In that case it is the US's
| problem and the US has an easy solution.
|
| When people talk about larger regulatory frameworks they
| see the problem as the more permissive side is giving
| people options and want that shut down immediately. If the
| US started talking about global regulation to ease
| investment, for example, that means they don't intend to
| make it any easier but they do want everyone to adhere to
| US compliance ideas whether or not they do business in the
| US. It is a way for people with bad ideas to make the world
| worse. I'd assume the situation in Europe turns out
| similarly.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| Well yes and no.
|
| Yes you can form a company in Ireland while living in France.
| But you cannot get an Irish VAT number without a physical
| presence in Ireland.
|
| And if - for example - France learns that you are running an
| Irish company from France (i.e. you have a 'permanent
| establishment' in France), they'll want you to file and pay
| French corporation tax. Which is likely sufficiently annoying
| that you may as well have formed a French company in the
| first place.
| melenaboija wrote:
| I am a European living in the US and my god I am tired of
| hearing this over and over again. If your biggest hurdle to
| start a company is the paperwork you'll have to do for one
| week, you better think of something else.
|
| And yes, there are other way bigger issues in my opinion, such
| as financing and even social support.
| nickff wrote:
| If the paperwork ended after one week, it wouldn't be so bad,
| but it's just the tip of the iceberg.
| melenaboija wrote:
| I don't understand why people pretend there's no paperwork
| to do in the US. Not only that, but different states have
| different processes.
|
| I think there are some misconceptions about the US and tend
| to over idealize, especially around paperwork and taxes.
| And I think it's precisely that misconception that makes it
| appealing to foreigners and makes it an attractive place to
| be an entrepreneur.
|
| And again, yes, objectively it's easier, but I don't think
| that's the main reason the country is successful in this
| aspect.
| nickff wrote:
| I agree that paperwork requirements exist on a spectrum,
| and I am only familiar with the requirements in a few
| different jurisdictions (though I've read a few
| comparisons with a wider variety).
|
| The USA's success is definitely not entirely due to a
| lack of paperwork requirements, though I believe the
| paperwork requirements are something of a microcosm of
| other issues in each jurisdiction.
| lossolo wrote:
| > 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").
|
| It was announced you will be able to create company fully
| online and will have it ready in max 48h.
| wicharek wrote:
| In my experience it is very easy and pretty cheap to start a
| LLC in Poland.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and
| dissolve it.
|
| In my experience this is _at least_ as important. Everyone
| focuses on the process of creating companies, which is now
| relatively streamlined in many European countries.
|
| The real, massive difference between the US and EU is how hard
| it is to shutdown a company and the legal implications of that.
| I was shocked at how unreasonably slow and painful it can be to
| shutdown a company in Europe the first time I did it. Many
| countries effectively treat it as a criminal proceeding.
| Sometimes startups just fail, that is the nature of startups.
|
| In the US shutting down a company is almost as easy as creating
| one.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| I've been told by a lawyer that a common sensible step in
| closing companies in Germany is to first...reseat the company
| in the UK ... (at least pre-brexit - not sure if things have
| changed). Think of how bad and _expensive_ the process has to
| be for this extra step to be worthwhile.
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| Dissolving an LLC is a in ideal case a multi month process.
| It's often easier and cheaper to just keep the LLC as zombie
| instead of trying to dissolve it.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| Agreed. The one bastion of sanity in all this is (/was) the UK.
| I formed my first company there, 18 years ago, online, in 30
| minutes, for around PS20.
|
| I then moved to Portugal and started not one but two companies
| there. The whole process is so clearly setup to discourage
| people from actually forming companies. Everything from the
| attitude of all involved ("are you sure?!"), to the practical
| bureaucracy and costs involved.
|
| I thought perhaps Portugal was just an outlier. But then I
| moved to Germany. And just wow. Definitely worse. Rounds of
| paperwork, notary offices, and fees. A process taking weeks.
| And for a GmbH a minimum investment of EUR25k. Sure you can
| form a UG. company for EUR1, but that effectively just
| announces "don't trust us, we're tiny" (IMHO).
|
| It is something that really saddens and frustrates me with the
| EU.
|
| Edit: And sure, you can form an Estonian company. But then you
| have to try and fly under the radar with regards to the
| 'permanent establishment' rules.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Yes please! I tripped over this recently. It's a bigger deal than
| it might seem.
|
| 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.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > 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 :)
| kvgr wrote:
| This doesnt fix the issue with taxation right? You would stull
| have to figure out where to pay taxes if you have customers
| from different countries.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| What issue? VAT is paid by the user (collected and remitted
| by you) and differs by country (used to be hassle, easy
| today), but the taxes you pay in your country for your
| company is the same regardless of where the users who paid
| you are based (assuming there isn't something country-
| specific about that), it's more about where your company is
| tax-resident.
|
| 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.
| kvgr wrote:
| Yes the issue is i form company in Estonia because i like
| their non distribution taxes. Or in czechia because i live
| there. Then move to spain. And they decide to tax the
| company in spain... with high taxes.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I mean if you now live in Spain, then you need to pay
| taxes in Spain, because that's where you live. This makes
| sense, does it not? Or is the expectation that you
| shouldn't pay taxes where you live, only where your
| company that you work for/in is based?
|
| FWIW, I also live in Spain, and also pay "high taxes" as
| I'm in the highest income bracket, and it sucks to see
| large parts of your income and capital gains disappear.
| But then I've also experienced the health care here, and
| see everyone being taken care of, and I sleep well again
| :)
| alibarber wrote:
| I think they mean that the Estonian company they run now
| has to file tax returns and pay taxes not only to Estonia
| but also Spain.
|
| The company lives in Estonia. Yeah if they are taking
| income personally locally then that should go to the
| country of residence, as is normal.
|
| But then if what Estonia considers acceptable standards
| for tax reporting differs from what Spain considers
| acceptable, or what they consider 'profit' etc, well good
| luck!
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > the Estonian company they run now has to file tax
| returns and pay taxes not only to Estonia but also Spain.
|
| Yes, this again makes sense to me. You have a company in
| Estonia, so that pays taxes in Estonia. You work for this
| company from Spain, so you pay taxes in Spain. Doesn't it
| work the same elsewhere? What other ways could it work,
| assuming we want taxes _somewhere_?
|
| > But then if what Estonia considers acceptable standards
| for tax reporting differs from what Spain considers
| acceptable
|
| Yes, that also makes sense, different countries have
| different systems? Again, if you open a company in
| Estonia, the ground assumption has to be that you're up
| for understanding Estonian tax laws. If you're living in
| Spain while working for that company, the ground
| assumption is that you're up for understanding both
| Spanish and Estonian tax laws, because they should of
| course get their taxes.
|
| As long as I don't get taxed on the same money in both
| countries (which there are a lot of bi-lateral agreements
| solving that), I don't see the issue here.
| alibarber wrote:
| The Estonian company pays the Spanish resident money to
| them personally. Indeed it is normal that the Spanish
| resident has to deal with the Spanish taxes on this money
| only.
|
| If the Estonian company is supposed to be considered a
| separate legal person based in Estonia, it shouldn't have
| to deal with anything Spanish.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > If the Estonian company is supposed to be considered a
| separate legal person based in Estonia, it shouldn't have
| to deal with anything Spanish.
|
| If the Estonian company has employed a person located in
| Spain, shouldn't the laws of both countries apply to this
| employment then? The employee lives in Spain, so
| obviously Spanish labor laws should be followed, and the
| company is in Estonia, so obviously Estonian law should
| apply.
|
| I'm not sure why the Estonian company wouldn't have to
| follow Spanish law if they've decided to employ a Spanish
| person? What laws should cover the person living in
| Spain, Estonian laws, although they don't live there?
| alibarber wrote:
| For labour - the laws of where that labour is actually
| being conducted are the ones that are followed. Spanish
| prosecutors can for sure bring a case against an Estonian
| company if they are not. In theory at least.
|
| But for company tax law, that company is a tax resident
| in Estonia, not Spain.
|
| Also, we harmonise laws such as traffic laws (for
| example, in Finland, all solid yellow central lines were
| painted white) so that people have the chance to work
| across the whole union as transport operators, why not do
| the same for entrepreneurs?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > where that labour is actually being conducted are the
| ones that are followed.
|
| So in that particular case, would be in both Estonia and
| Spain, just so we're on the same side?
|
| > But for company tax law, that company is a tax resident
| in Estonia, not Spain.
|
| Indeed, and I don't think the Estonian company would pay
| Spanish taxes, correct? Unless they have a presence
| (subsidiary for example) in Spain, then they would have
| to pay Spanish taxes. But if not, it's only the employee
| who pay Spanish tax. Or did I understand incorrectly?
|
| > why not do the same for entrepreneurs?
|
| I think this is exactly what we're doing right now :)
| Small steps, but EU-INC seems to be one of those steps in
| that direction.
| alibarber wrote:
| > So in that particular case, would be in both Estonia
| and Spain, just so we're on the same side?
|
| It sounds like we are. If labour is being conducted in
| both of those countries then yes. And the same anywhere
| else where someone might join the party.
|
| And on the tax thing - yes again, but what I see
| happening now in European countries, is that, if a person
| of significant control resides in another country, then
| that other country considers the company a tax resident
| of that country too.
|
| E.g: I live in Finland. If I were to open an Estonian
| company and have it literally do nothing all year, not
| only would I have to file a company report in Estonia,
| (fine, that's why I chose to start a company there,
| perhaps it's really easy) but also file a company report
| in Finland as if the company were a Finnish company.
|
| I think this is an overreach of bureaucracy and adds a
| friction to entrepreneurship. Others might think
| differently - which I completely accept. Unfortunately
| for me, I do not think that this initiative here will
| change this, much. Perhaps I am mistaken. Either way, it
| is in the right direction and I support it.
| smhg wrote:
| > As long as I don't get taxed on the same money in both
| countries, I don't see the issue here.
|
| That's exactly one of the current issues. The general
| rule is something like 'taxation happens where the
| company creates value'. Registration in Estonia just
| means taxation starts in Estonia. But at any point can
| Spain say 'we consider this a Spanish company'. After
| Spain taxes too, you can request a tax refund in Estonia.
| That's assuming they agree. Both countries will only
| communicate with the company, not with each other.
|
| So while double taxation treaties are great, they are not
| doing much upfront in this respect.
|
| The above is about company taxation, not personal taxes.
| For SMB that line is often confusing.
| tga wrote:
| Indeed, the current state of affairs is rather sad.
|
| To employ a regular (non-management) employee in Spain
| (and it applies anywhere else in Europe), an Estonian
| company would to at least have a local address, then
| register and maintain regular contact with several
| authorities there (chamber of commerce, social
| administration, tax office). The bureaucratic overhead
| makes it practically impossible to have employees across
| several countries (definitely as a small company), the
| only practical option is to pay an employer of record
| ~600 EUR/month extra (significant salary difference) only
| for the joy of maintaining the employment paperwork.
|
| The really fun part happens if a managing director moves.
| Then the company is considered to have a permanent
| establishment in Spain, needs now to maintain ALL
| administration like a Spanish company, and to comply with
| Spanish corporate law, in parallel to what it was already
| doing at home. Both countries' laws apply, both expect
| taxes, and it is not even clear cut how much of the
| company activity and profits should be taxed by the
| company's home country and how much by the director's
| country! And having multiple managing directors in
| several countries is probably an exercise in frustration.
|
| Then, if the director has enough and moves somewhere
| else, it all starts again in the new country (and you
| also have the headache, costs, and risks of closing the
| Spanish entity).
|
| The EU may have free travel, but you can basically forget
| actually freely moving around as a small business owner,
| the company administration is prohibitively complicated.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > the only practical option
|
| The actual practical option people end up using in
| practice (speaking as someone who've moved around in
| Europe, working for various other European companies) is
| that you ask them to self-employ in the country they
| live, then you treat them as contractors, offset any
| extra costs that'd come with compared to full-time, and
| do the best you can with that.
|
| It's not ideal, and not a real solution by wide margin,
| and there is plenty of stuff that can get better, but I
| think it's the most "practical" and pragmatic option you
| can make use of today.
| kvgr wrote:
| Yes, but some companies need employees on paper. When
| they do custom based software and want to apply for a
| job, there is often a number of heads you need to employ.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Now move to an actual border area. Thanks to Schengen you
| can travel freely back and forth, sure, but your
| headaches compound.
| alibarber wrote:
| It's somewhat similar in Finland.
|
| This is why I don't get what the EU brings to the table
| at all. I've considered starting something, never quite
| yet pulled the trigger, but I may as well do it in the UK
| because it's extremely cheap, gives access to a great
| number of services, and I can do it all in English there.
|
| It's not like the company itself is going to be queuing
| at an airport or whatever.
|
| I'll have to file in Finland for the company anyway then,
| but I can skip all the stuff about starting an
| organisation here.
| kvgr wrote:
| Yeah, you should pay taxes from where the company is run.
| Basically if you have one person company. In a place it
| "does" business. But i want estonian company for the ease
| of doing business and for to hold profit, for
| reinvestment later. I dont want to deal with
| spanish/german authorities if i move around and want to
| grow business. No government competition is what they
| want. Because they cant win in square fight.
| layer8 wrote:
| > This is all because the national systems still sort of assume
| that you'll live and work and stay inside one EU country.
|
| It's more because taxes and the judiciary are bound to
| countries.
| merelythere wrote:
| Finally something that feel like removing some borders. On the
| long term it could bring a lot of positives changes, even
| breaking or displacing nationalism.
|
| And here I am picturing what could look like the new European
| far right and far left...
| seydor wrote:
| I would like to see the details on this. The EU has alredy
| jurisdictions that make it "too easy" to run a company and others
| that make it exceedingly difficult, and the two are in
| competition. It's one thing to start a company in cyprus, another
| to start in Germany.
|
| 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
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I'd also like to see the details, it seems to be a difficult
| undertaking but something the EU really needs. As an example,
| when I incorporate a company outside of Portugal then the tax
| authority can classify it as a CFC (controlled foreign company)
| and tax it very high, and it can lead to double taxation.
| AFAIK, the rules are quite complex. A EU-wide registry should
| prevent that, but that might require a EU-wide harmonization of
| 27 tax systems (plus potential associated countries like
| Switzerland and the UK).
| eclat wrote:
| It's the 28th regime. Look up societas europaea.
| egorfine wrote:
| > Local taxes & employment
|
| Completely and totally defeats the purpose.
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| Unfortunately this does not override employment and tax laws - so
| you still cannot hire someone as an FTE in Paris, from a startup
| in Berlin for example (without them being a freelancer, or you
| opening a payroll / tax office in France).
|
| 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.
| gpjanik wrote:
| You can, Deel etc. make this pretty easy.
| tadzik_ wrote:
| Deel is one of the reasons why my policy for working for
| foreign companies is "B2B or I'm fucking off". Everyone I
| know (employees/contractors using it, not the other side) who
| went for it hated and regretted it.
|
| 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.
| colinb wrote:
| How certain are you of this? I only have anecdata, but when I
| tried to use a 3rd party agency to hire someone in France,
| from Ireland I got the process through several layers of
| management, up to and including the CEO and COO of my
| American employer, and HR, and legal counsel, only to be
| warned away in the most emphatic terms by external counsel.
| They told us of the risk of large fines and jail time in
| France for executives of companies doing this.
|
| As I said, anecdotal, and a few years old.
| weslleyskah wrote:
| > They told us of the risk of large fines and jail time in
| France for executives of companies doing this.
|
| Just for hiring someone from France?
| colinb wrote:
| just for hiring someone in France via a third-party
| employer of record.
| woodson wrote:
| You still need a tax accountant in France to register the FTE
| and file paperwork with the tax office and social insurance.
| benimar wrote:
| I scrolled it high level but it does not look to me like this is
| solving any real problem and probably its creating new ones. Sure
| if you are cash strapped startup and can't afford getting a tax
| advice or an investor that does not want to pay for a due
| diligence this could save some money on paper. Most of the
| supposed benefit of this pan European legal entity seems problem
| that has been already solved in the real world. The same type of
| entity works more or less the same through out of Europe with
| mostly marginal difference, and sounds more like an excuse than
| anything. Of course each jurisdiction has is own jurisprudence
| which make the landscape more complex, but once you get a new
| type of "inc" you are going to get new jurisprudence, only that
| in this case you are going to be a lot of jurisdictions conflicts
| and potentially you might have to take into account multi-
| jurisdictions jurisprudence making everything even more complex.
| Also I would remove as second point an "EU-central registry",
| it's not exactly a killer feature considering that all the
| European registries are currently accessible from a single web
| page already.
| krisknez wrote:
| I'm from Croatia, and starting and running a company here is
| expensive. Estonia makes it much easier, so you might think: why
| not open a company in Estonia?
|
| 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.
| eclat wrote:
| Estonian fiscal law doesn't apply if your company operates from
| Croatia. The only reason you can't do this in practice is
| because you'll have a hard time finding a Croatian accountant
| willing to work with your Estonian company. That's something
| EU-inc aims to address.
| mmunj wrote:
| _> 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)
| alibarber wrote:
| If the clients are cross border - there is no threshold, you
| have to charge the VAT rate of the country in which they are
| located from the start.
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| Even if you incorporate in Estonia it wouldn't change anything
| . Because the company would still be considered tax resident in
| Croatia .
| matesz wrote:
| My Dear German friends, please accept that EU-inc is a massive
| boost for EU competitiveness. Continuing to block progress here
| only proves that the EU is good at making promises on paper but
| fails to deliver real change.
|
| 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.
| inanothertime wrote:
| National sovereignty is not national pride. Paying company
| taxes to the 28th regime evicts tax contributions to the
| company's home nation. Massive German tax money is already
| today used for non-national interests. EU-inc makes this only
| worse.
| jcattle wrote:
| National sovereignty in Europe is not possible without
| international collaboration.
| tietjens wrote:
| > Massive German tax money is already today used for non-
| national interests.
|
| Please elaborate. You're complaining that DE tax funds go to
| the EU? Very curious what you're talking about and your
| rational.
| sevenzero wrote:
| It's one of the idiotic "our tax money is spent for bicycle
| lanes in foreign countries" mindsets many right wingers
| share in Germany.
| miroljub wrote:
| Just because you accusse people to be "right wingers"
| because they don't want to fund bicycle lanes in foreign
| countries doesn't make them wrong.
|
| If you want to fund bicycle lanes in foreign countries,
| go start a fund an fund them privately.
|
| For the people that don't know the topic:
|
| - yes, German taxpayers are indeed funding bicycle lanes
| in foreign countries
|
| - it's not the only waste of money going to foreign
| countries
|
| And additional questions:
|
| - since when is it forbidden to complain against the
| waste of tax money?
|
| - how does favouring tax cuts instead of tax money waste
| makes you a "right wing"?
| sevenzero wrote:
| What people like you dont understand is what we get back
| from investing into foreign countries. We dont just build
| bicycle lanes there because we are such nice people.
| miroljub wrote:
| Can you please explain (ELI style) the great benefits
| German taxpayers have from the bicycle lanes in Peru?
| lifty wrote:
| I agree with your characterisation of what is going on,
| and at some point, the EU states will have to decide for
| full fiscal integration or for removing the common
| currency. You can't have a common currency without a
| common fiscal union. So we either have to integrate more
| or desintegrate more, this inbetween we have now is not
| working very well. Speaking as a European, not sure what
| is better.
| miroljub wrote:
| Not related to the comment, but in general I agree with
| you.
|
| You can't have a single monetary system without complete
| unification, including tax systems, budgeting systems,
| governance models, retirement systems, benefits. I mean,
| you can, like we have now, but it's not sustainable, and
| eventually we all have it worse.
|
| As a European, I would not want to go that way, since I'm
| afraid such a unified EU will be a bureaucratic monster
| that is even more centralized than the USA, and way more
| autocratic than any current EU state.
|
| I'd rather take a step back, dissolve much of the EU's
| competences, and go back to pure trade union, dissolve
| the EURO as a currency, and let every member state take
| sovereign decisions on their own.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I recently became much more pro-total-unification, so let
| me give you this counterpoint: individually, European
| nations are no match to the major superpowers, neither
| economically nor militarily. We'll get gutted by divide-
| and-conquer approach. In contrast, bound much closer
| together (particularly with some form of pan-european
| armed forces), the EU would become a proper global
| superpower and a counterbalance for the USA and China.
| sevenzero wrote:
| You cant really believe any of the EU countries actually
| want to work together? The EU was only possible with the
| premise of countries keeping their autonomy. Believe me
| when I say that us Germans would rather go to war than
| merge with France, just as an example.
| harperlee wrote:
| Funding other member states to be able to grow may be
| labeled waste, or investment on creating new markets for
| Germany.
| miroljub wrote:
| That's the same fallacy as claiming that rich people save
| money by donating to charity.
|
| Simple example:
|
| - Germany gives 100 EUR to other EU states
|
| - Those states 100 EUR to buy made in Germany goods
|
| - German companies have 10 EUR profits from those sales
|
| - German state collects 5 EUR from those profits
|
| In summary, German taxpayers paid 100 EUR so the state
| can collect 5 EUR taxes, and companies another 5 EUR. Not
| a very good deal.
|
| And this calculation is crazy optimistic, because it
| assumes that all money that Germany gives to other
| countries will be used to purchase German good. In
| reality, they will be spent willy-nilly and German
| companies may not see even 1 EUR in return.
| harperlee wrote:
| It seems that in your worldview value and wealth does not
| increase, just changes hands.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| This calculation is flawed. German state collects much
| more than 5EUR, because there is VAT etc and, of course,
| employees of that company pay income tax from their share
| of that 100EUR they just got back.
| tchalla wrote:
| >> For the people that don't know the topic:
|
| >> - yes, German taxpayers are indeed funding bicycle
| lanes in foreign countries
|
| Just for people to know this, we are talking about
| 44MnEUR (20MnEUR + 24MnEUR) of money in Peru as the
| commentator mentions below. It is wasteful but it has
| practically no effect on Germany. There are 1000x things
| that Germany does within Germany that moves the needle
| more than the talking about this rounding error. But that
| requires introspection and ownership of responsibility -
| both alien to the country's normal compliance attitude of
| working.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Maybe they're talking about the protection of Israel
| miroljub wrote:
| > You're complaining that DE tax funds go to the EU? Very
| curious what you're talking about and your rational.
|
| Germany is the biggest net contributor to the EU. The money
| comes from German taxpayers, who receive disproportionately
| little value in return.
| jorge-d wrote:
| This is wrong on so many levels. The German economy
| profits _a lot_ from the membership. You can't just look
| at the monetary in/out flows to/from EU accounts but to
| the system as a whole.
| pegasus wrote:
| That sounds an awful lot like the Trump whining about
| being taking advantage of while bullying countries around
| the world to do his bidding.
| cael450 wrote:
| This is the same argument Trump is using to blow up
| America's position in NATO.
| psychoslave wrote:
| National sovereignty, like "we are able to feed people with
| food grown on our soils?"
|
| Mercosur anyone?
| niemandhier wrote:
| To be fair: our soil would greatly benefit from being
| allowed to rest for a decade.
|
| In parts of Europe, our soil essentially depleted. I
| recommend reading." 100 harvests."
| psychoslave wrote:
| This can happen without putting the most part of
| intensive payload in a form of external dependencies that
| can be cut at any point by many factors, while losing all
| the skills and knowledge on how to effectively plant and
| harvest. Qualified farmers don't appear magically over
| night, let alone people with the passion required to
| invest their own life into it.
|
| And exporting the model that ravaged one own land,
| selling the poison that was forbidden in the countries
| exporting it, what kind of behavior is that? Letting some
| land having a bit of rest while the same depletion
| process is applied elsewhere, how fair is that?
| prasoon2211 wrote:
| This is incorrect. Taxes, pensions and labour laws apply
| according to the country where the EU Inc is operating.
| matesz wrote:
| I don't understand the tax objection. The 28th regime changes
| corporate law, not fiscal law. A Berlin-based "EU-Inc" still
| pays full taxes (Korperschaftsteuer, Gewerbesteuer, etc.) to
| the local Finanzamt. It isn't a disembodied tax haven - it
| just standardizes the legal wrapper.
|
| 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).
| lava_pidgeon wrote:
| This idea was made by French and German government . I'm not
| sure why do you think the German government is against it.
| matesz wrote:
| > This idea was made by French and German government
|
| It is true, but lets face it - it is just a high-level
| proposal. Better than previous ones for sure, but still just
| a proposal.
|
| And there is a massive gap between the PR and the legal
| reality. Germany and Austria already torpedoed the previous
| attempt (the SUP) specifically because it allowed online
| formation without a notary.
|
| So I would advise against certainty in that the fight is
| over. I also don't want to wait another 10 years. Honestly by
| that time just setup topco in UK and if series A will come
| just do the flip later if you don't want to go to SV straight
| away.
| ronsor wrote:
| Reading this thread, I do not get Germany's worship of
| notaries and notarizations.
| moooo99 wrote:
| What I find funny is that in Germany, you can only buy a
| house with a notary to prevent shady things (reasonable),
| but up until 2023, you could literally buy the entire
| thing with cash, without having to provide any proof of
| the origin of the funds.
| WilcoKruijer wrote:
| Isn't the notary there to take note of the shadiness of
| buying in cash and, if shady enough, abolish the
| transfer?
| sevenzero wrote:
| If you think we have a say in whatever our boomer politicians
| do, we have not. It wouldn't matter what parties we vote for,
| none of them are equipped to make informed decisions, and if
| they have people informing them they'll just ignore everything
| they learned. Germany currently is in a downward spiral into
| borderline fascism, I don't think coming with rational
| arguments will be fruitful. All people care about are
| foreigners and gas bills.
| matesz wrote:
| Its important to understand the context. Germany, and Europe
| in general, is basically like a falling empire. It will be
| less and less significant and life won't get any better than
| it is relatively speaking. The same will almost certainly
| happen with the US, but first goes Europe.
|
| Unfortunately citizens and therefore ruling elites of empires
| fueled by relatively extremely high standard of living for
| decades in comparison to the rest of the World always have
| very hard time swallowing their national pride. They have
| built very elaborate conceptual framework of linking their
| nationality to the level of relative success, fueled by
| politicians who want to make people feel good again about
| their nationality.
|
| Just look at the news, almost everything directly or
| indirectly is linked to the concept "nation".
|
| And in almost all cases of empires a natural consequence of
| their fall is war. So, it is very important to set
| expectations right.
| pegasus wrote:
| Are you foretelling the dissolution of the British Empire
| which happened many decades ago? Are you saying Algeria
| will soon be free of French colonial rule? Is your middle
| name Nostradamus?
| matesz wrote:
| It isn't prophecy. The Harvard Belfer Center study
| (Thucydides's Trap) analyzed 16 cases in the last 500
| years where a rising power challenged a ruling empire: 12
| of them ended in war.
|
| The UK is actually the perfect example of this danger.
| The British Empire didn't dissolve peacefully - it was
| effectively destroyed by WWI and WWII while trying to
| suppress a rising Germany.
|
| The subsequent transfer of hegemony to the US was a rare
| statistical anomaly (a "special case" driven by shared
| culture and total British exhaustion), but the Empire's
| fall itself was catastrophic.
|
| The pattern is violence, not peace. And remember that
| other aspiring nations to maintain it's position as
| Empire actively acting to destabilize situation in other
| states. The reason is simple - it is easiest way to
| maintain their status.
|
| Brexit for instance was a boon for everybody but UK and
| EU. There is clear data already about Russian
| intervention. Recent overt US intervention into ensuring
| UK remaining separate and EU becoming separate. Think
| about it.
| pegasus wrote:
| Sure, but my point is that all that is in the past. The
| British Empire already fell, and so did all the other
| European colonial powers. These days, when I think of
| empire, countries like the US, China or Russia fit the
| bill much more than the EU, which is struggling to reach
| that level of integration and influence.
| matesz wrote:
| > These days, when I think of empire, countries like the
| US, China or Russia fit the bill much more than the EU,
| which is struggling to reach that level of integration
| and influence.
|
| Of course! Especially because there is no unified army
| control.
|
| But this requires giving more context. We can't forget
| that there are ways, especially ways made by empires, to
| force other nations to go to war not only as an ally but
| also to make them less relevant and take a hit also.
|
| One of the main factors which makes this more probable,
| is what op mentioned, the raise of fascism and combatant
| militaristic attitudes exacerbated by the fact that their
| own nation / empire is a falling empire. And EU didn't
| fell yet, it is huge economy with more people than the
| US.
| odiroot wrote:
| I'm skeptical. At least Germanic countries love their
| bureaucracy. It's an etatism thing.
| oellegaard wrote:
| I have seen promotion of this idea multiple times but every time
| I read about it I fail to understand the gains.
|
| 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.
| tietjens wrote:
| Have you started a company that took investment from funds
| located in other countries within the EU? That is the main
| focus of this idea. Lowering the barrier to investing in
| startups across EU nation states.
|
| 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.
| whizzter wrote:
| I think starting and investing per-se really isn't the major
| issue for some time (at least in Sweden and probably
| Denmark), we've gotten many small business friendly laws over
| the past 15-20 years.
|
| At the same time there are many discrepancies that makes it
| hard for companies from one country to mesh with companies
| from another country.
|
| Law tradition (Napoleonic, German or Nordic), tax rules
| (German rules were (are?) notorious for their complexity,etc.
| , then there's certain laws such as the Finnish money
| gathering law that can be a problem for very early stage
| development ( https://solhsa.com/wishlist.html ).
|
| All the above creates friction, and if EU-inc would follow
| German rules, I'd rather just stay with a Swedish company
| because..
|
| Luckily the EU has harmonized things so a startup in one
| country can mostly work within local rules as long as we make
| sure to distribute earnings from different countries
| correctly.
|
| The trickier part is forming bonds, such as for investor
| and/or startup protection for across-border investments when
| one wants to grow, various scams over the years has played
| out differently in various countries so those kinds of laws
| could be quite an issue outside of the stock market.
| whizzter wrote:
| Yep, same feeling as a Swede with so much being streamlined
| online, but at the same time I can see how it'd be a nightmare
| for someone without a BankID (or in Denmark MitID).
| titaniumrain wrote:
| omg, another jaw dropping nonsense!!!
| _el1s7 wrote:
| This is good, but don't think it will change much. The EU suffers
| from bureaucracy and disparate rules for each country, which is a
| pain in the ass for startups, it really needs unification on
| taxes, and less rules.
| jongjong wrote:
| I still can't believe that we live in a world where those in
| power can roll out literal scams and people are grateful to them
| for making their lives easier - The government is basically
| providing minor relief from their own regulatory oppression, in
| order to further centralize control. Humans are dumb. It's
| infuriating.
|
| 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.
| ta20240528 wrote:
| Its not that difficult to setup a company in Europe. Tedious but
| not impossible.
|
| What's really difficult is setting up a compnay and opening a
| bank account in the company's name from abroad.
| deadbabe wrote:
| IMO Europe will lose its soul if it tries to be too competitive.
| Once it becomes too easy to start a business or raise capital, it
| becomes easy to spiral into workaholism. Gone will be the days of
| month long holidays and leisurely pace.
| c7b wrote:
| Isn't there already the SE (Societas Europaea) [0]? How does this
| differ? Would be good to address in the FAQ.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea
| pell wrote:
| The SE has a minimum capital requirement of 120k EUR so is not
| within reach for most people. I think this EU-Inc would be a
| simple structure with a lower threshold.
|
| 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.
| _petronius wrote:
| Per the Wikipedia article, an SE cannot be incorporated
| directly. It must be created out of one or more national,
| public (!) companies already formed under the law of a member
| state.
| kvgr wrote:
| This + abolish VAT. The amount of money stolen in VAT scams is jn
| bilions of euros.
| peterspath wrote:
| This + only pay taxes where the company is founded, not where
| you live at that moment in time.
|
| 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.
| kvgr wrote:
| Yes please. The whole centre of interest. Form company in
| Estonia, move yourself to Spain. But hey lets tax the company
| in spain :D
| scirob wrote:
| yea so annoying, and the ambiguity with which the center of
| business is decided...
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| That's the dumbest stuff I've heard.
|
| This way you avoid incredibly huge amounts of taxes.
|
| There is a reason why cfc rules found their way into atad.
| apexalpha wrote:
| As a Dutch person I never understood this push until someone told
| me (and this is true in 2026!!!) that if you open a LLC (Gmbh?)
| in Germany you have to physically go to the notary and have a
| person READ OUT all the statutes to you.
|
| 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.
| _petronius wrote:
| This is true of all contract notarization in Germany (even when
| buying a house, jesus that is a slog), and although it is a
| bendy-banana level silly thing that people focus on, isn't
| actually the biggest problem in company founding here. MUCH
| more problematic is unfavorable tax rules making equity
| compensation difficult, capital requirements, legal/notary
| fees, and an investor class that is notoriously skittish.
|
| 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.
| askonomm wrote:
| That's crazy. Notarization in Estonia can be done entirely
| online using a digital signature, just like everything else
| here is done (including voting, getting married, getting
| divorced, filing taxes, opening/closing a company, etc). From
| all I hear Germany is still stuck in the 90s for some reason.
| tietjens wrote:
| 90s is charitable. Most important thing here is that
| nothing changes. Everything new is considered suspicious.
| askonomm wrote:
| The weird thing is that, at least as an Estonian, I
| would've never expected this from Germany. Italy, Spain?
| Sure. Germany? That just feels weird.
| vander_elst wrote:
| Germany is _incredibly_ under developed in the
| digitalization plus the amount of red tape to do even
| basic things is also very large as well. Getting rid of
| these things takes a lot of will power and at the moment
| there is very little.
| ost-ing wrote:
| Germany never thought it would be in the current
| situation - decaying health care, pension system,
| cornerstone industry in decline, lack of digitalization,
| the list goes on. Massive reforms are needed, action is
| needed, but there is too much inertia in the system to
| change anything quickly.
|
| Smaller countries like Estonia have the ability to be
| much more nimble.
| tietjens wrote:
| Yes somehow they believed the 90s continue despite zero
| public investment. They talk about the dangers of debt
| for future generations, but they are silent about the
| infrastructure debt they are saddling their children with
| by not investing on any serious scale.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Fun fact, the Bundestag is one of the most representative
| parliaments in the world thanks to MMP. Is the executive
| dysfunctional? Is it the federal split into 16 tiny
| states causing this?
|
| If it was just a matter of size, similar/larger countries
| would be in the same state, and at least one of your
| smaller states would get ahead right?
| usrnm wrote:
| Just wait until you try to use their trains
| _petronius wrote:
| More like no one is willing to stick their neck out
| politically to argue for the positive public policy
| changes, or challenge regulatory interpretation needed to
| make real change. Plenty of people see the problems, and
| even want to fix them, and get stymied by political
| processes that abhor actually having to argue for change
| to electorate.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I can also listen to a notary online in Austria. I just
| absolutely do not want to have the notary involved in the
| first place.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Lots of systems are stuck in very old ways of working and
| using humans as cogs. My American utility bill has a typo
| in my name that is not there in the online system through
| which I opened my account; a human in a back office read
| text from one app and typed it into another. Maybe there
| was even a piece of paper involved.
| hijodelsol wrote:
| I agree. The notary process is a bit annoying, but it only
| costs 500-1,000 euros. Yes, that's not ideal, but if you're
| building a proper business, that shouldn't be an issue. You
| can typically get an appointment within a week, no matter
| where you are or where your company is registered. However,
| once the notary sends your documents off, it can take days or
| weeks for the registry courts to handle them. You have to
| register with ten other places yourselves, and there's no
| guidance. There are different forms and requirements, and the
| yearly costs just for a basic tax declaration are in the
| thousands. They can be 5-10% of early startup expenses for no
| good reason. There are also some shady setups, such as a
| private company handling the company registry for the state.
| You have to pay this company each year to publish your books.
| Accessing that data still costs money, except for the largest
| companies. It doesn't help with transparency, but it is a
| public-private rent-seeking nightmare that (possibly) arose
| due to conflicts of interest among certain politicians (the
| company's CEO has a higher-level position in political party)
| and lobbying.
| pjc50 wrote:
| In the UK there's an API https://developer.company-
| information.service.gov.uk/overvie... and it costs PS50.
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/companies-
| house-f...
|
| Why is Germany ten times less efficient?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Germany really wants you to be a sole trader with
| unlimited liability, and treats a liability shield as
| something you shouldn't have.
| tchalla wrote:
| > but it only costs 500-1,000 euros. Yes, that's not ideal,
| but if you're building a proper business, that shouldn't be
| an issue.
|
| It is and should be an issue. You shouldn't be required to
| put in any money towards a text to speech translator let
| alone 1000EUR.
| bgnn wrote:
| This here is the problem for most of EU countries.
|
| 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..
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| > finding a representative of a trade union
|
| > how much their cut will be
|
| Did you have any employees yet? I guess so. Isn't it the
| employees' responsibility pay for their union membership?
| f_devd wrote:
| > Isn't it the employees' responsibility pay for their
| union membership?
|
| No, contributions are handled by the employer/company
| bgnn wrote:
| Individuals pay like 25-30 Euronth contribution, which is
| tax deductible. Employers can pay a lot, like 10% or
| more, which is often going to a social security fund.
| rambambram wrote:
| These trade unions are notorious for that. I worked as a
| labor legal advisor and especially the unions for temporary
| employment agency start 'barking' and demand loads of money
| (even from years back). Sometimes it's not even clear which
| union is applicable.
|
| You probably have all the info right now, but make sure
| everything is 'in line'. I mean, have your company codes at
| the tax authority match the applicable union match the
| actual things that your company does. Depending on the jobs
| of the employees, it might be smart to split the company
| into multiple legal entities.
|
| All in all you can be happy that this happened within a
| couple of months. Finding this out when you're years
| underway and then having to pay millions... I've seen
| plenty of these cases.
|
| Want to start a business in The Netherlands? Make sure to
| do a 'CAO check' first, think about how to structure your
| company (one entity? multiple entities? what job goes
| where?), and do these checks again once you pivot or make
| certain changes to the actual work that your company does.
|
| The rationale for this is also pretty simple: somebody got
| to pay for all this nice social security. They say it's
| part of the risk of being an entrepreneur.
| bgnn wrote:
| Yeah our case was strange because we develop chips and
| design software related to it. Belastingdienst
| categorized us wrongly as metalelektro, and we got this
| guys (Cometec) within two weeks of that. In the meantime
| we have applied this sector assignment to be corrected,
| which eventually happened while we were getting
| threatened into bankruptcy by these guys.
|
| What I don't understand is, we got a lot of help from
| RVO, Belastingdienst etc before and during incorporation.
| Nobody talked about this! We got sone numbers from
| Belastingdienst about social security contributions per
| sector, but like 15% cut per employee wasn't mentioned
| once. To this date I don't know what legal basis do they
| have to ask for this amount of contribution. Nobody
| mentioned any law, or a decision by ministery of social
| affairs. Very strange to deal with this, because it's
| literally someone showing up and asking for money without
| telling even based on what.. It gave very strong gang
| vibes, which was surprising for me as I was always a
| member of a trade union.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Personally I would not create "EU-INC" but just make all
| local entities legal in every country.
|
| 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.
| peterspath wrote:
| Same in the Netherlands for BV's. At least a few years ago,
| maybe it changed...
| t0mas88 wrote:
| All of the heavy BV requirements changed in 2012. You can now
| start a BV very quickly, if you want you can do it online,
| and without any minimum capital requirement.
| scirob wrote:
| Looks like as per 2022 it is possible to register a GMBH in
| Germany fully online https://www.brak.de/newsroom/news/gmbh-
| und-ug-koennen-ab-1-a... also
| https://www.ihk.de/stuttgart/fuer-unternehmen/recht-und-steu...
| here are the online notaries: https://online.notar.de/
|
| Firma.de estimates 6 weeks https://www.firma.de/en/company-
| formation/how-to-set-up-a-gm...
|
| beglaubigt.de estimates 3 weeks https://beglaubigt.de/ug-
| gruenden
|
| Holvi estimates 4 weeks https://blog.holvi.com/de/gmbh-oder-ug-
| gr%C3%BCnden-2025-abl...
| prasoon2211 wrote:
| I founded a UG and a GmbH in 2024. It took me 3 months total
| including visits to the notary (who charges a non-
| insignificant sum for their services).
|
| 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.
| woodson wrote:
| The bank issues/refusals may have something to do with
| FATCA. If you have anything to do with the US in terms of
| taxes, many EU banks don't want you as their customer. If
| it's a subsidiary of a foreign company, then a lot of
| paperwork is required to prove that the foreign owners
| actually exist.
| hobofan wrote:
| With experience and optimal prerequisites (good connections
| to a notary, single founder with default bylaws and no asset
| transfer into the company) you can do it in ~4 days, e.g. for
| a holding company.
|
| I did it in ~2 weeks last year, where almost a week was
| caused by the coworking space I rent at not notifying me of
| the physical mail from the court. If that physical mail would
| be eliminated from the process you could probably do it in 2
| days.
|
| Apart from that, for any non-trivial situation, the majority
| of the time will be determined by how fast you can proceed
| through the process of adjusting your bylaws, etc. and
| evaluating tax situation (so lawyer + tax advisor waiting
| time).
|
| (after that the process of waiting for a tax ID starts, which
| depending on where you live can easily be the slowest part
| and take ~6 weeks on its own.)
| usrnm wrote:
| > you have to physically go to the notary and have a person
| READ OUT all the statutes to you.
|
| I guess, you've never bought a house in the Netherlands then,
| because it's the same exact process
| hexbin010 wrote:
| That is beyond hilarious lol. Finally found something the UK
| does better than the Netherlands ;)
| dark-star wrote:
| I never understood why people focus on this "reading aloud"
| so much.
|
| It's not so much about the reading out loud, it's about
| making sure you understand (so that you cannot later claim
| "but I didn't know about this, nobody explained it to me
| properly")
| zdragnar wrote:
| What does reading it aloud make a difference to you
| reading it yourself? You can still claim that they
| misspoke or had an accent and you misheard or any of a
| dozen other excuses.
|
| The whole point of a contract is you sign your name to
| the words on the paper, and you are attesting that the
| words therein are correct and what you agree to.
| apexalpha wrote:
| I am living in my second house I bought and they absolutely
| did not.
|
| They just confirmed I was buying a house for X.
|
| They did not read the whole thing.
| Kiala wrote:
| A reading is mandatory (art. 43 WNA), but a party may opt
| for a limited reading if it declares that it has read and
| understood the content.
| bmicraft wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Like the current downward spiral of US states competing who can
| have the lowest corporate tax while letting their
| infrastructure crumble? But hey, that's a long term thing and
| we don't think about those. Only which companies move to my
| state in the next year/quarter/month.
| AlanYx wrote:
| I'm surprised that Germany never relaxed the in-person
| notarization requirements during COVID. A lot of jurisdictions
| around the world did change their rules to allow remote
| notarization.
| martin_a wrote:
| They did. This can be done online since August 2022.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Interesting, thanks! Apparently it requires a German eID-
| enabled ID card (or compatible EU ID) and doesn't include
| transactions involving real estate, but still it's
| progress.
| lima wrote:
| The German eID system had a bad start but it works fine
| now.
| Fraaaank wrote:
| It's the same in the Netherlands.
|
| There is European legislation since 2024 that allows 'digital'
| notaries (Directive 2019/1151). Not many notaries support it
| though.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| In the Netherlands it's much simpler. The notary only has to
| identify you for their record keeping, no mandatory reading
| of things etc.
|
| And once identified for something you can easily authorise
| the notary to sign other things on your behalf as well.
|
| We did that all the time when for example adding new entities
| to a group structure. Just e-sign the authorisation and
| that's all.
| tchalla wrote:
| If only it were that. You have to put up 25000EUR in capital
| and pay absurd amount of fees to the notary for essentially
| being a text to speech translator.
| lima wrote:
| The minimum capital requirement is the whole point of a GmbH.
| If you don't want it, you can found a UG, which is the same
| thing with no capital requirement.
| apexalpha wrote:
| If both are the same what's the point of having 2?
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Trustworthiness. You know a GmbH has at least 25000EUR
| you can sue them for. And a UG has to put parts of their
| profits into becoming a GmbH, so eventually everyone big
| enough is a GmbH.
| yencabulator wrote:
| In USA, I had to get paperwork notarized to have the local
| water utility open an account for me.
| lima wrote:
| Not anymore, Germany has a streamlined online notarization
| process for creating a simple GmbH now.
|
| I've recently managed to get everything done in <1 week,
| including bank account.
|
| Progress!
| jsumrall wrote:
| I wonder who owns this eu-inc.org website and is selling the
| merch.
|
| In the ToS it states: >These Terms are governed by the laws of
| the State of California
| joelthelion wrote:
| Someone in Silicon Valley really wants this to happen :-)
| 1337biz wrote:
| It is by some guy on X who memed about the EU Inc for a long
| time.
| jcattle wrote:
| The FAQ states:
|
| > Imprint: eu-inc.org, Factory Lisbon, Av. Infante Dom Henrique
| 143, 1950-406 Lisboa, Portugal
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Which is odd, because Germany is the country that requires
| the "imprint", and it absolutely must be labelled "impressum"
| and not "imprint".
| jcattle wrote:
| Can you point to any law which states that it has to be
| Impressum? Could not find anything and I doubt that this
| naming is a law.
|
| Also: Germany is by far not the only country which requires
| a sort of imprint.
| dewey wrote:
| One of them is https://klinger.io who has been lobbying and
| working on this EU Inc topic for a while if you follow him on
| Linkedin.
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| Yeah, I think there is some confusion in this thread. eu-
| inc.org isn't an official source or anything, though von der
| Leyen did say "EU Inc" in her speech at Davos. The European
| Parliament specifically mentioned not liking "incorporated"
| because it was American terminology preferring "Societas
| Europaea Unificata" instead which is pretty funny.
| patates wrote:
| Can you guys please somehow involve Switzerland too? I'm thinkng
| about moving there and my German employer is like, "No! Even
| France would be extremely hard, Switzerland is plain impossible
| for payroll!".
|
| 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 :)
| hvb2 wrote:
| Before you move there, for fun, look into what it would take to
| buy a house there :)
| patates wrote:
| It's impossible here, triple impossible there, so still the
| same price from my perspective.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Doesn't Estonia already offer something similar?
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| No they don't. The most similar thing would be a SE
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea
| xinayder wrote:
| Er, what exactly is this? It's not mentioned anywhere for
| laypeople like me. Perhaps they should focus on explaining what
| this project is, before asking for people to spread awareness.
| How can you spread awareness about something you don't even know
| what it is?
| tggycom wrote:
| There is a pretty good TL;DR on their "In-Depth Proposal" site:
| https://proposal.eu-inc.org/TL-DR-14d076fd79c581959325c8e52d...
| xinayder wrote:
| Thanks, but from a quick glance I couldn't find it on the
| homepage. Also, it's a Notion document, they could instead
| just write all of these points on their landing page?
|
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| > couldn't find it on the homepage
|
| 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 first section titled "WHAT IS EU-INC".
| Archelaos wrote:
| I agree. It looks very unprofessional. No contact adress. No
| representative person. No explanation of the acronym "EU-INC".
| Big buzzwords, visions, cliches and self congratulation.
| solaire_oa wrote:
| Which isn't to say that "making commerce cheaper in Europe"
| isn't a worthwhile goal, it is- but at face value this
| attempt looks comically inept. "We wrote an email to a
| politician! Progress due any moment! Like and share!"
|
| Doing the insufferable, thankless work of mitigating the
| commercial choke-points of bureaucracy on a Continental scale
| makes this effort's failure a forgone conclusion. I would
| take the attempt more seriously if the individuals tried to
| make their own country more commerce-friendly, rather than
| all of Europe.
|
| Even so, points for trying something- anything- and raising
| "awareness".
| storus wrote:
| OK, but how is this going to be taxed? That's where the problem
| is. Maybe it will be cheaper to incorporate but then what, are
| individual countries going to lose on their expected taxes?
| lava_pidgeon wrote:
| Can some people share why there is a need for incorparation on
| European level? Lobbyist fighting for it so but I don't get the
| problems to solve it.
| goldenarm wrote:
| @dang This post is an Ad for unofficial merch, profiting from an
| ongoing news story. Should we change the URL ?
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/da/speech...
| https://tech.eu/2026/01/20/the-european-commission-launches-...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| This submission originally did link to https://ec.europa.eu/com
| mission/presscorner/detail/da/speech..., but was later changed
| to this. Or two submissions (one for each URL) was
| linked/merged. But something used to link to the press release
| rather than this website, FWIW.
|
| 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.
| goldenarm wrote:
| [deleted]
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > The grassroot movement is from https://proposal.eu-
| inc.org
|
| 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?
| goldenarm wrote:
| Apologies, misred that part, but I maintain the rest of
| my argument.
|
| This is unofficial, pushing for merch, 5 lines of info
| page, and should not have replaced a post about more
| detailed news reports.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| How can you maintain the rest of your argument when the
| entire basis for said argument been proven wrong? It's
| not "profiting from an ongoing news story" when they
| literally created what this news story is about!
| dewey wrote:
| That's not someone profiting from the news story. It's the
| website of the group of people who were pushing that, talking
| to the EU and lobbying for it for a while.
|
| It's even linked on the website of the organizers behind it
| https://klinger.io and https://www.linkedin.com/company/eu-
| inc/about/
| jcattle wrote:
| This is the official page of the EU-INC lobby group.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Note we already have European Cooperative Society (SCE), but of
| course its not going to make a capitalist/shareholder fond
| mindset really appealed.
|
| https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/proximity...
| sunshine-o wrote:
| Anybody get a xkcd 927 [0] feel here?
|
| 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/
| bluecalm wrote:
| EU like making new regulation. There are simpler steps to make
| doing business here easier:
|
| -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.
| fhennig wrote:
| This is the way. Refactor the law.
| alibarber wrote:
| This is a great initiative that I've been following, but the
| stumbling block is still 'local taxes [and employment]' - that's
| still 27 different tax codes to deal with, submitting returns to
| in 27 different languages.
|
| Even now with cross-border selling, there are 27 different VAT
| codes to follow when transacting within Europe. Sure, you can
| report and actually settle it to a single national authority (and
| then that national process separately).
|
| Unless a country will actually defer parts of its company and tax
| law to Brussels, for companies present in that country - then I
| just don't really see what this brings over just starting a
| limited company in another state (even outside of the EU) - as
| you'll still have to follow national law in the country where
| you're resident anyway, which could be anything.
|
| (e.g. I start an Estonian OU with E residency, I live in Finland.
| I am obliged under Finnish law to submit a return for that
| company in Finland too as a person of control. In Finnish, along
| with the Estonian return, in Estonian)
| tcldr wrote:
| Agreed. If the CFC (controlled foreign corporation) rules still
| apply for founders in EU-member states, it will fail.
|
| I'm hoping they can be creative and find a way to distribute
| revenues to member states in a way that works for everyone.
|
| For employment taxes, one way could be to tax EU-inc employees
| as if self-employed in their personal tax domicile.
| dzonga wrote:
| wasn't usurlla saying this was now law at her Davos address ?
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Wow, I was writing about something like having an easy way to
| create EU legal entity (all be it from India) on a different
| thread.
|
| I hope this succeeds and also hopefully allows easy creation of
| EU company from outside EU as well.
|
| Atleast personally I am interested in creating a EU company which
| holds Indian company instead of vice versa because as I said on
| other comments, I think I deeply align with EU privacy laws &
| usually most of EU in general.
|
| Currently someone messaged on my other comment and the best way
| which is estonia would cost me around 1500 euros or more which is
| just a no go for me personally right now.
|
| I have only read it from top of the page but if I may ask, can
| someone tell if does this benefit my use case?
| jurschreuder wrote:
| People are completely overreacting how much regulation there is
| in Europe here. There is more regulations against monopolies and
| USA BigTech is always crying about that and spreading propaganda
| about that. But starting a startup is way cheaper in Europe you
| won't need funding like in the USA even.
| tokai wrote:
| HN users has the wildest takes on Europe. Often completely made
| up, or something specific to one country made out to be true on
| the whole continent.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It's pretty funny. Europeans get so angry at US people
| claiming to have seen "Europe" when they've been in London,
| Paris and Rome, and yet they (we) do the same thing on lots
| of other topics.
|
| I think it's just human nature, tbh.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Then why do you think virtually all of the most successful tech
| startups are U.S. companies? (Excluding Asia, for the purposes
| of this discussion.) Is it just Silicon Valley network effects?
| trilogic wrote:
| Europe need to open the pipe to free markets, simply said buy and
| sell with no damn taxes or restrictions. People is afraid to
| start a business because of many bullsh.t regulations and taxes,
| uncertainty and intentional lack of transparency. Doing business
| shouldn't be so damn hard, it should not require so many
| licenses, permissions, burocracy. It should be instead given
| priority and treated like gold as it is business that move the
| economy, employ people, create jobs, give you a reason to wake up
| motivated in the morning and even an incentive and right
| condition for population growth.
|
| Then 3-5% of the entire money flow goes to private
| pockets/bankers. Are you f.cking kidding me, an optimal gpd
| growth is ~3% but we giving it away to some parasite for free?
| Why, I do not consent nor agree.
|
| This parasites, blood suckers, ignorant puppets, with full power
| and kart blanch can't see further then their nose. BUt ofc a
| parasite kill the host and move elsewhere, so I guess no issues
| here.
|
| Stop this nonsense throttling damn it, you need to be prosecuted
| legally for economic murder and sufferance caused because of it.
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| The first point already exists:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea
|
| The second point is dubious. A central registry may be better or
| worse than the best national registry.
|
| The third and fourth are what is usually called the Capital
| Markets Union in eurobubble speak:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Markets_Union
|
| The Draghi report had some specific proposals which are rather
| realistic:
|
| > Reduce capital market fragmentation > > A. Introduce a European
| Security Exchange Commission > > B. Reduce regulatory
| fragmentation to deepen the CMU > > C. Encourage retail investors
| through the offer of second pillar pension schemes where the
| successful examples of some EU Member States can be replicated. >
| > D. Assess whether further changes to the capital requirements
| under Solvency II are warranted by further reducing the capital
| charges on equity investments held for the long term.
|
| https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3...
|
| https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/ec1409c1-d4b4...
| (p. 292)
| csmpltn wrote:
| The EU in a nutshell. It's never about achieving anything through
| actual work - it's all about the illusion of progress through
| buying domain names, custom fonts, padding: 200px, marketing, and
| more paperwork.
| observationist wrote:
| By the time they've figured out how to properly document and
| annotate the process of removing their collective head from their
| ass, the US and China will have moved well past completion of
| several cycles of the AI revolution. The EU is fundamentally
| broken because they are led by people who have never accomplished
| things, with credentials from institutions that have forgotten
| how to teach and train and prepare for the real world. They have
| fully embraced the credentialism and pompous titles in lieu of
| competence and effectiveness, have leeched off of their wealthy
| and successful citizens, and made progress or dynamic change
| impossible.
|
| The leeches and bureaucrats don't care about actually
| accomplishing things, about ending corruption, or fixing any of
| the real world problems experienced by the citizens of the EU.
| They just want their grift to continue, to feel morally and
| intellectually superior, and to feel the validation of exercising
| power over their subjugates. Because they know better, and their
| education is superior, and if everyone would just listen to the
| experts, the whole world would just get along and run smoothly.
|
| Everywhere else in the world that allows people to actually do
| things - and the Europeans that "just do things" in defiance of
| all the idiots in charge - will own the world in ten years. The
| EU will be a sad little footnote about the dangers of
| bureaucratic overreach and pompous elitism.
| logifail wrote:
| Sorry, but I'm not convinced that the EU is actually capable of
| _reducing_ regulation.
|
| There are some who talk the talk, but when it comes down to it,
| the behemoth that is the Brussels (and Strasbourg!) machine will
| never accept reducing its influence.
|
| Re: Strasbourg, ditching the EU Parliament in Strasbourg
| completely would a really great first step to indicate that the
| EU is serious about cutting waste. However, the French have a
| veto, so it will never happen.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/20/eu-parliament-s-114m-a-y...
| Sprotch wrote:
| How is this different from an SE, which has been existing since
| 2004?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea
| sirlantis wrote:
| > Current EU company structures like the European Company (SE)
| are made for public companies and ill-suited for startups due
| to high capital requirements, complex formation processes, and
| heavy administrative burdens. A flexible, tailored EU-wide
| entity for startups will solve these issues.
|
| From the FAQ https://www.eu-inc.org/faq
| Sprotch wrote:
| Thank you - it is indeed EUR120k minimum capital
|
| Then I suggest they make noise to lower it to EUR1 - much
| easier than creating a new legal structure
| bflesch wrote:
| So if it is a european legal entity why they host it on .org
| which is only controlled by USA instead of using a .eu domain
| which is a ccTLD controlled by European Union?
| rmoriz wrote:
| Starting a company is not the issue, running costs, taxes,
| bureaucracy is a huge burden. Take US LLC. It's a bargain to
| operate.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Not the EU, but the UK:
|
| About 2012, it was incredibly difficult to start a limited
| liability partnership/corporation in the UK, roughly physically-
| located around Chelsea to Canary Wharf. One of the big hurdles
| was acquiring specific record-keeping instruments that weren't
| sold in specialty legal stationery shops, but only by some dude
| literally selling them out of his boot (trunk in America). Maybe
| the other partners had outdated information, which was a
| possibility. Contemporaneously, it was possible to start a
| Delaware corporation online in the US in under 3 days and for
| less than $300 USD.
| alangibson wrote:
| Please Lord don't let the Austrians any where near this. The
| Notar system is the the closest thing to outright theft by
| paperwork I've ever seen.
|
| We paid 3K on a 50K plot of land for some dingus to _read a
| contract out loud_.
| nine_k wrote:
| I think it should be _stupid simple_ to create a small company,
| Sorry, "stupid" is important here, anything lesser would not
| convey the meaning against the EU background. Something like a
| proof of identity, a one sheet stating the structure of the
| company (a sole proprietorship or a small LLC with limited funds
| and employees), the nature of the business (e.g. "software
| development"), and a moderate processing fee. The process should
| be serving a notification, not obtaining a permission.
|
| It should be equally simple to shut down a small company, once
| all its dues are paid.
|
| Once a company grows larger (say, past 15 full-time employees, or
| past EUR10M in revenue), maybe something additional might be
| asked, because now the company would be able to afford handling
| it.
|
| And, of course, sensitive things like selling food or medicines
| would require extra licensing, but it's not that the lack of
| bakeries or pharmacies what's holding back the tech industry
| progress in the EU.
| ultim8k wrote:
| This is really great news!
|
| We also need a paneuropean banking & tax system and ideally some
| paneuropean telephony (plus voip) and internet providers.
| philsnow wrote:
| Please please tell me it's pronounced "yoink"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJh1hmmLLzw
| slim wrote:
| This thing is dismissed because it cites Zensurla von der Leyen
| in its front page
| Stancyhd8 wrote:
| Thanks so much to Henryclarkethicalhacler for helping me hack
| into my husband's phone so I could see what he is up to and I was
| able to catch him red handed, now I am out and a lot happier
| credit goes to earlier mention hacker for a good job. If you are
| also interested in any hack job you can contact him via his email
| - HENRYCLARKETHICALHACKER@ G MAIL. COM
|
| Tell him Victoria refer you
| KarenDaBass wrote:
| And i thought we already have the EU, Inc. (Davos, Brussles, "The
| Commision")
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| Don't forget that you have to pay the for a useless IHK in
| Germany...
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