Inside the latest push for a frictionless EU Inc. framework

At Pleo, we’re keeping a close eye on the evolution of EU Inc., and recent developments have been moving fast. So let us get you up to speed.

The European Commission recently presented its proposal for EU Inc., firming up how the framework is designed to make it easier for businesses to start, operate, and grow across the EU. The Commission also called on the European Parliament and Council to reach an agreement by the end of 2026, which seems really promising.

We already covered what EU Inc. means for scaling businesses across Europe, but as a quick reminder, it’s an optional, “28th regime” that would sit alongside existing national legal frameworks. Its goal is to simplify cross-border growth, allowing companies to incorporate once and operate across the EU, using a digital process that could take as little as 48 hours.

For Pleo CEO and Co-Founder Jeppe Rindom, this move has been a long time coming, and he sees the recent developments as a significant and much-needed step in the right direction. Now, let’s take a deeper look at what that could mean for companies and founders.

Seamless single market or fragmentation and friction? 

We hear a lot about the European single market. But in reality, fragmentation and operational friction are the norm, as Jeppe explains:

“Every expansion into a new country requires a different setup, including notary appointments, filings with the commercial register, and local managing director requirements. And of course, this all takes time and money.

As a Danish company, Pleo has experienced this operational friction firsthand. When entering the Netherlands, the structural preparations, including establishing a separate legal entity, took five months, even though the operating model remained exactly the same.”

Of course, this isn’t an isolated case. Every company looking to expand into new European locations faces the same frustrations.

As Jeppe says:

“At Pleo, we operate all over Europe. We need to have setups in each of the different countries where we have customers. That’s been a costly process and requires huge focus, including working with a legal partner in each market. It’s a lot of friction.”

The Draghi report on EU competitiveness also highlighted this type of fragmentation and called for action to close Europe’s innovation gap. One of the proposed solutions was to make it easier for companies to operate across the EU by guaranteeing one set of rules, the foundation of EU Inc.

Jeppe’s opinion, as he recently outlined to Tech.eu, is that this can only be a good thing:

“The proposition emerged from a broader realisation that Europe has been weak on innovation, and that European countries are individually small on the global stage. Combine this with recent geopolitical and economic events, the urgency for Europe to become more independent and self-sufficient has only intensified.

Operating across Europe has been costly and time-consuming, with expansion today requiring different partners, structures, and processes in each market — much of which is still analogue.”

What EU Inc. could change 

Operating under a single framework across the EU helps companies avoid wasting time and money setting up legal entities in each market. EU Inc. aims to deliver these practical improvements:

• Faster registration
• Simpler procedures
• Fully digital operations
• Helping founders restart faster and cheaper
• Better conditions to attract investment
• Better means to attract talent
• Full access to the single market
• Strong safeguards against abuse
• Flexibility of shares

Jeppe explains what those kinds of improvements could mean for founders:

“For companies like Pleo, a proposal like EU Inc. could have enabled faster expansion, lower costs, and greater ambition, with the fragmentation of planning growth across borders removed. We could’ve scaled faster and taken on US competitors with far less friction.”

The details are still evolving, but it’s those details that will really define how transformative EU Inc. will be. As Jeppe says:

“The devil is in the details, and we haven’t really seen that granularity yet. But EU Inc. has been positioned as something that will make it easier for founders to consider themselves a European business that has a European passport to operate across the region.”

Early indications suggest the European Commission will likely introduce EU Inc. as a regulation. But questions remain around the kind of interface it will use, plus how different countries might interpret the law.

The mindset shift: From national to European 

EU Inc. doesn’t just have the potential to create structural changes to how businesses scale across Europe. Jeppe mentions it also has the potential to shift mindset and culture from day one:

“I think we would have seen ourselves less as a Danish company and more as a European company from day one. And I think that’s an important mindset change, because it means we’re European now by nature.”

This change might have monetary implications, but Jeppe notes there’s an even bigger implication for ambition:

“The cost in Euros is one thing. But the cost of ambition is much higher. Previously, we had to think of ourselves in terms of country-by-country growth. But with EU Inc., we have a big playground called Europe.”

What's next for EU Inc. 

The appetite for EU Inc. is strong, with the policy being backed by over 22,000 signatories across Europe. The recent momentum from the European Commission is an encouraging sign that an agreement may be in place by the end of 2026.

Time will tell whether EU Inc. goes far enough to make a meaningful difference to how business in Europe gets done. But it’s a starting point. This framework’s details will shape how businesses operate across Europe, and Pleo will be keeping a very close eye on its progress.

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