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EU Inc., the proposed pan-European corporate form for startups operating across borders (Regulation COM(2026) 321, March 2026), is now in early Council and Parliament negotiations.
Last week the file moved at three distinct layers. The Council Working Party held a session longer than any prior session on the file. The European Commission formally presented the proposal to Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee, JURI. And on the academic side, the 7th LawFin Workshop produced the most concentrated expert review the proposal has had outside the institutions. Here is what each one means.
In this edition:
- Council, Session 4 was the longest yet
- Parliament, JURI hears Commissioner McGrath, the shadow rapporteurs are already meeting stakeholders
- Academics, the 7th LawFin Workshop and what the scholars tested
- What we are watching next, the Working Party calendar and the COMPET Council
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Council: Session 4 was the longest yet
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Session 4 of the Working Party on Company Law ran on 6 and 7 May. The agenda, published as CM 2644/26, shows the full session was dedicated to article-by-article examination of EU Inc., with the working document referenced as 7498/26 plus six addenda. Earlier sessions were single days; Session 4 ran for two days, a small but meaningful signal that the technical work is taking more time than the original calendar assumed.
No public readout from Sessions 3 or 4 has appeared on the Council register yet.
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Parliament: JURI hears the Commissioner
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On 4 and 5 May, JURI held its first formal sessions on EU Inc., with Commissioner Michael McGrath presenting the proposal directly to the committee's Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). The committee has not yet named its rapporteur, the lead MEP who would draft Parliament's first amendment report. Several political groups have, in the meantime, designated shadow rapporteurs, the figures who work the file inside each group in parallel. Their meeting logs in the EU transparency register are a useful early indicator of where the political pressure is forming.
Pascal Canfin (Renew Europe) has registered fourteen meetings on the file between 23 March and 6 May 2026, with a balanced political map: Mistral AI, General Catalyst, Invest Europe, Allied for Startups, France Fintech, Equify, and Mirakl on one side; the European Trade Union Confederation (twice), the Danish Trade Union Confederation, the CFDT, and the French court registrars on the other. Arash Saeidi (the Left) has registered two meetings: the European Trade Union Confederation on 14 April and Blockchain for Europe on 23 April.
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Academics: the 7th LawFin Workshop
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On 7 May, the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), together with Bocconi University's Department of Legal Studies and the LawFin Center at Goethe University Frankfurt, held the 7th LawFin Workshop online via Zoom, under the title "The 28th Regime: An Effective Legal Architecture for Innovation in Europe?"
The day was chaired by Professor Giovanni Strampelli of Bocconi and brought together more than a dozen senior scholars and discussants across four paper sessions and a closing roundtable, with Professor Luca Enriques, Dr Casimiro Nigro, and Professor Tobias Tröger leading the most cited critique of the universal-scope design. The workshop tested EU Inc. on venture capital contracting, insolvency design, political economy, and whether the proposal solves the right cross-border problem in the first place.
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What we are watching next
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The Working Party meets again next Monday, 18 May, for Session 5. Three further sessions are visible on the public calendar after that, with the last on 8 July. The Working Party is the body of civil servants from each member state government that examines the proposal article by article at technical level, before any ministerial discussion. Its work on EU Inc. is currently the only active layer of negotiation.
The next ministerial meeting in the relevant Council formation is COMPET on 28 and 29 May. We are checking whether EU Inc. surfaces on its agenda; as of 12 May there is no indication it will be a discussion item at this Council.
| 18 May 2026 |
Council Working Party Session 5 |
| 2 June 2026 |
Council Working Party Session 6 |
| 2 July 2026 |
Council Working Party Session 7 |
| 8 July 2026 |
Council Working Party Session 8 |
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Sources
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We will keep tracking the Working Party readouts, the JURI rapporteur appointment when it lands, and the academic post-workshop papers as they publish. Shorter focused issues will follow when the next major signal arrives, on the legal text, the founder implications, or the wider 28th-regime path.
If this work is useful, please share the newsletter and the website with other founders, startup operators, legal advisers, investors, and policymakers following the file.
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