Where EU Inc comes from: Draghi, Letta and the road to a proposal
EU Inc is a proposed regulation (COM(2026) 321), not yet adopted. Dates below are milestones on the way to a text still under negotiation.
EU Inc did not appear from nowhere. It is the policy output of two influential reports, a founder-led advocacy campaign, and a fast sequence of institutional moves in 2025–2026 that turned a diagnosis into a concrete legislative proposal.
The diagnosis: two reports
- Letta report — Much More Than a Market (April 2024). Enrico Letta’s high-level report on the future of the single market framed the fragmentation of 27 national company-law regimes as a structural brake on European scale-ups. A company that is straightforward to run at home meets a different legal and administrative wall in every other member state.
- Draghi report on EU competitiveness (September 2024). Mario Draghi’s report sharpened the language: legal fragmentation is an “invisible tariff” on cross-border growth — a cost that does not show up as a customs duty but taxes every attempt to operate Europe-wide.
Both reports converged on the same conclusion: the single market is incomplete as long as company law stays 27-way fragmented. Neither invented “EU Inc” as a brand, but together they supplied the intellectual case for it.
The campaign
In parallel, eu-inc.org — a grassroots advocacy campaign backed by investors and founder networks including Index, Sequoia, Balderton and France Digitale — turned the reports’ diagnosis into a specific demand: a single, optional, pan-European legal form. The campaign owns the brand and the advocacy framing. This site deliberately covers the operational questions it does not: how the form would work, what it would cost, and how it compares.
From idea to text
The institutional machinery moved quickly through 2025 and early 2026:
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 30 Sep 2025 | Commission stakeholder consultation on the 28th regime closes |
| 16 Jan 2026 | Parliament previews a new legal framework for innovative companies |
| 20 Jan 2026 | Parliament adopts an own-initiative resolution (INL, 2025/2079) with recommendations |
| 16 Feb 2026 | President von der Leyen sets out the “One Europe, One Market” roadmap |
| 18 Mar 2026 | Commission publishes the EU Inc proposal, COM(2026) 321 |
| 19–20 Mar 2026 | European Council endorses “One Europe, One Market” and names the 28th regime a 2026 priority |
Two of these steps carry particular political weight. Parliament’s own-initiative resolution on 20 January 2026 (procedure 2025/2079(INL)) was the legislature signalling it wanted a text and setting out what it should contain — a way of pushing the Commission and pre-shaping the proposal. And Ursula von der Leyen’s “One Europe, One Market” roadmap of 16 February 2026 placed EU Inc inside a broader single-market narrative, framing a company-law reform as headline competitiveness infrastructure rather than a technical file.
The Commission then published the proposal on 18 March 2026 as COM(2026) 321 final — a Regulation resting on Article 114 TFEU, the internal-market legal basis. Days later, on 19–20 March 2026, the European Council endorsed the “One Europe, One Market” agenda, named the 28th company-law regime a priority for 2026, and called on the co-legislators to adopt it by the end of the year. Endorsement by heads of state and government does not make it law — it is political direction — but it set the tempo for everything that has followed.
The political logic
Read together, the sequence follows a recognisable EU pattern. Independent reports (Letta, Draghi) supply the diagnosis and the vocabulary. An advocacy campaign converts it into a nameable demand. Parliament uses an own-initiative resolution to claim the agenda and pressure the executive. The Commission President folds it into a flagship narrative. The Commission publishes a Regulation — chosen precisely because it is directly applicable and needs no national transposition, sidestepping 27 separate implementation battles. And the European Council supplies top-level political cover and a deadline.
What that logic does not settle is the hard part: tax stays national, worker participation and co-determination are unresolved, and preventing “letterbox” registrations is contentious. Endorsement bought momentum and an end-2026 adoption target; it did not resolve the substance. Those fights now play out in committee and Council.
For the substance of the proposal, see what is EU Inc. For what happens next and when, see the EU Inc timeline and the live, dated legislative tracker.