The 28th regime and its end-2026 date

The 28th regime was not on the agenda when Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee sat on 28 September, and on 30 September a Council note on it goes to the member states’ ambassadors. The official record shows how much still has to happen before the end of the year.

The “One Europe, One Market” roadmap (Council document ST 8473/26) carries the date in its annex. Under “A more integrated Single Market” it lists EU Inc. with the proposal due in the first quarter of 2026 and agreement by the end of the year. In the roadmap’s own words, Parliament and the Council “commit to working towards a swift agreement on all the legislative proposals set out in the annex, treating them as political priorities”.

Progress is reviewed every quarter, and the first review in June listed the proposal as launched. No other deadline on the regime carries all three signatures.

Her Letter of Intent of 16 September lists EU Inc. with capital markets, energy grids and public procurement, to be delivered “together as urgently as possible”. It is not among the letter’s new initiatives. It sits under a different sentence, “We need to conclude the legislative work currently on the table, implement what we have agreed and enforce our rules.” Nothing new was promised, and the regime was counted as work already owed.

Her prepared address did not name it. Her answer in the debate did, at length, when Morten Løkkegaard asked her how to get the Council to deliver faster. The verbatim report of the sitting records her calling for “the spotlight” on the legislative process, “and I’m not speaking here of the Parliament”, so that “we are not turning this very straightforward regulation into one with 27 different national variations like we have with a directive”. She finished on the same point: do not turn “this speedboat that is so necessary into a heavy tanker that would disappoint everyone”.

Two clauses in that sentence carry its meaning, and both are missing from the versions that have circulated since. She put it as a warning about what must not happen rather than a description of what is happening, and she named the Council by expressly excluding Parliament.

The 28th regime was not on the agenda for the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) sitting of 28 September, PE792.201 of 22 September. The committee’s next two sittings, on 8 and 19 October, are half-day slots in Strasbourg plenary weeks, and neither has a published agenda; 4 November is its next full sitting in Brussels.

The procedure file, 2026/0074(COD), still reads “Awaiting committee decision”. Parliament has the rapporteur’s draft report, PE790.143 of 29 June, with his own amendments 1 to 246; 1,418 members’ amendments, numbered 247 to 1664, across PE791.127 to PE791.131, none of them adopted; and one adopted committee opinion, from Employment and Social Affairs, covered below.

The 19 October plenary date on the procedure file is indicative, and a first-reading vote there needs the committee’s report first. Everything the committee needs in order to vote has been on its desk since July. What is missing is a date.

Two Parliament committees give the Legal Affairs Committee a formal opinion on this proposal, and the second of them has now delivered. The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) adopted PE788.967 on 10 September, by 26 votes in favour, 19 against and 7 abstentions, across 97 amendments. The procedure file dates the document 11 September, which is when it reached JURI rather than when it was voted.

Two amendments would narrow who can use the regime at all. One limits the new form to companies that “qualify as startups and scaleups at the time of registration” and are not publicly listed. The other bars it from construction, agriculture, hospitality, transport, food processing, cleaning and care work, and lets the Commission add sectors. On worker participation, the opinion moves the test from the country of the registered office to the countries where people actually work, and applies the highest board-level requirement among them unless something else is negotiated. Nothing in the opinion touches Article 34.

The roll call is worth as much as the result. The EPP (European People’s Party), the largest group in Parliament, voted against by nine to three, and Renew split evenly. An opinion is not binding on JURI in any case, and one carried against the biggest group arrives there with less behind it than 26 to 19 suggests.

A Council note titled “Guidance for further work”, ST 12849/26 of 25 September, is registered for the meeting of the Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper, the member states’ ambassadors) on Wednesday, 30 September. Its content is not public.

The last note under that title, ST 11522/26 of 10 July, is public. It asked the ambassadors two questions: whether to delete Chapter X, “Insolvency proceedings”, and which Treaty article the regulation should rest on. The Presidency’s first compromise text, ST 11829/26 of 17 July, came two days after that meeting and answered both. It strikes out Chapter X, Articles 88 to 102, and keeps Article 114, the single market article, as the only legal basis.

The second compromise text of 7 September, ST 12824/26, is not public: Parliament’s text can be read down to the last amendment, the Council’s current one cannot. We have asked the Council for access to it; it has until 19 October to answer.

Guidance is not a mandate, and neither co-legislator has a negotiating mandate on any published calendar. But the last time the ambassadors were asked this question, the Presidency had its answers in a draft text within a week.

Article 34 of the Commission proposal, headed “Central digital register”, tells the Commission to develop the EU central interface “towards a central digital register for EU Inc. companies”, an EU-level register alongside the national ones. Denmark, France and Spain asked to delete it in the member states’ drafting suggestions of 26 June, WK 9143/2026. By the revision of 15 July, WK 9143/2026 REV 2, 24 of the 27 member states had filed, and Germany and Romania had joined them; Germany found a parallel register “rather costly without providing significant value”. Croatia remained its one clear supporter.

The Presidency’s first compromise text, two days later, strikes Article 34 out in full and keeps Article 15, the central interface itself, the online entry point linked to the national business registers. The Committee of the Regions, in the opinion the Council circulated on 18 September as ST 13324/26, would write the same limit into Article 15: the interface “shall not constitute a centralised European corporate registry”.

In Parliament, 9 of the 1,418 amendments target Article 34, from Pascal Canfin’s, which deletes it, to two from Czech members that keep it. None has been adopted.

Whether Article 34 survived into the second compromise text is not on any public record. On the register, the member states, the Presidency’s first text and the Committee of the Regions point one way; Parliament’s nine amendments point every way. Our read of the 618-page Council redline goes through the drafting suggestions article by article.

• 29 September 2026The Council’s Working Party on Company Law meets at 10:00.
• 30 September 2026The member states’ ambassadors take the guidance note ST 12849/26 in Coreper.
• 8 and 19 October 2026The Legal Affairs Committee sits, both short slots in Strasbourg plenary weeks, neither with a published agenda.
• 19 October 2026The plenary first-reading date on the procedure file. It is indicative and needs a committee report first.
• 4 November 2026The committee’s next full sitting in Brussels. The working party has further sessions listed to 13 November.

A meeting on a calendar is not a vote, and none of these dates is one. The dates above are kept current, with their sources, on the progress tracker.

We will be tracking three things next: what the ambassadors do with the guidance note on 30 September, whether a third compromise text follows it as fast as the first followed the July note, and whether the Legal Affairs Committee puts the 28th regime on an October agenda. Each is a step the end-2026 date depends on.

• “One Europe, One Market Roadmap of the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission”, Council document ST 8473/26, Brussels, 23 April 2026: annex, building block “A more integrated Single Market”
• “A solid start: first progress report on the One Europe, One Market roadmap”, joint press release, 18 June 2026
• State of the Union 2026, President von der Leyen’s Letter of Intent to President Metsola and Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Brussels, 16 September 2026
• 2026 State of the Union Address by President von der Leyen, 16 September 2026
• Verbatim report of proceedings, European Parliament, sitting of 16 September 2026, CRE-10-2026-09-16: President von der Leyen’s reply to Morten Løkkegaard
• “Opinion of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs for the Committee on Legal Affairs”, PE788.967, rapporteur Johan Danielsson, adopted in committee 10 September 2026
• Procedure file 2026/0074(COD), Legislative Observatory, read 29 September 2026
• Draft agenda of the Legal Affairs Committee meeting of 28 September 2026, PE792.201 of 22 September; Legal Affairs Committee meetings schedule, europarl.europa.eu, for the October and November sittings
• Council note ST 12849/26, 25 September 2026, “Guidance for further work”, to the Permanent Representatives Committee: register entry, date of meeting 30 September 2026 (content not public)
• Council note ST 11522/26, 10 July 2026, “Guidance for further work”, to the Permanent Representatives Committee
• Council document ST 11829/26, 17 July 2026, “First Presidency compromise text”: Chapter X (Articles 88 to 102), Articles 15 and 34
• Council meeting pages, Working Party on Company Law: meetings 370047 (29 September), 370259 (8 October), 370488 (22 October), 370644 (29 October), 370801 (6 November) and 370884 (13 November)
• WK 9143/2026 INIT, 26 June 2026, and WK 9143/2026 REV 2, 15 July 2026, Council of the EU: member states’ drafting suggestions, Article 34 (INIT pages 246 to 254; REV 2 pages 291 to 299)
• Opinion of the European Committee of the Regions, circulated as ST 13324/26, 18 September 2026: amendment 9, Article 15
• Commission proposal COM(2026) 321, Article 34, as reproduced in WK 9143/2026 and in the committee amendments
• Amendments submitted in committee, PE791.130 (amendments 1133 to 1141) and PE791.131 (amendment 1640)