EU unveils EU‑Inc at Davos, sending ‘very strong signal’ to founders and investors

What started out a year ago as a founder-led grassroots petition is now edging its way into the heart of the EU’s startup policy.

We’re talking about EU-INC, the much-hyped plan for a pan-European company structure that would let startups incorporate and scale across the bloc under a single rulebook.

In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen named EU-INC as a central part of its new business strategy for the first time.

“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,” Von der Leyen said.

EU-INC has gathered over 16,000 signatures from across the startup world. Hundreds of European VCs support the initiative, including impact investors World Fund, Pale Blue Dot, and Planet A Ventures.

Von der Leyen said the goal is for companies to be able to register a business digitally within 48 hours in any member state and face the same capital rules across the EU. That would make it as easy to scale in Europe as in unified markets like the US or China.

If the reform succeeds, von der Leyen said, it could both help European scaleups stay and attract more international capital.

She said Europe starts from a strong position, with major companies in everything from wind power and next-generation batteries to aerospace and the industrial machinery needed to build chips or advanced weapons systems, as well as firms deploying AI at the same pace as their US competitors. What Europe needs, she said, is speed.

“Europe is in the race for tomorrow’s key technologies. But as global competition becomes ever more ruthless, we must show real ambition.”

One of the initiators behind EU-INC, Andreas Klinger, welcomed the signal but stressed that implementation will be crucial.

“Adopting the name itself is a very strong signal. Now it’s about living up to that name and ensuring the reform truly matches what the startup ecosystem is asking for,” he said on Viraj Acharya’s YouTube channel, Ventures.

Massimiliano Magrini, founder and managing partner at United Ventures, welcomed the move.

“Regulation builds walls to keep bad things out. Design builds bridges to let good things flow,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Europe has historically been great at the former and struggled with the latter. That is exactly what the EU-INC proposal aims to fix.”