Of the 1,815 interventions, 324 strike text: the delegation crossed out words in the drafting column instead of writing a comment about them. A strike is the clearest sign of what a member state wants gone, and the strikes are not spread evenly.

Chapter X, insolvency, absorbs 148 of the 324 on its own, and the reason is two delegations. Czechia and Estonia each filed 72 interventions there and struck the chapter provision by provision, Article 88 through Article 102. That is a deletion written into the text, not a reservation noted beside it. Only ten of the 21 contributing states wrote anything on Chapter X at all (Czechia 72, Estonia 72, Latvia 16, Portugal 11, Greece 11, Luxembourg 9, Lithuania 5, Poland 5, Finland 1, Bulgaria 1). Eleven delegations left the insolvency chapter alone.

Set Chapter X aside and 176 strikes remain. The most struck article in the rest of the proposal is Article 44, directors’ duties: 13 strikes from six delegations (Denmark, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Sweden, Slovakia) on an article that drew 14 states in total. Chapter V, organisation, holds 42 strikes, more than any chapter outside insolvency, with Article 46 (related-party transactions) at 7 and Article 45 (directors’ conflicts of interest) at 6. Article 79, the taxation of warrants under the EU Employee Stock Option Plan, draws 7.

Who is doing the striking matters as much as where it lands. Czechia (92), Estonia (90), Luxembourg (37) and Sweden (35) account between them for 78.4 percent of every strike in the document. Estonia, Malta, Luxembourg and Czechia together hold 70.1 percent of the 324, and 46.6 percent of the 176 outside Chapter X, on about 3.0 percent of the Union’s population.

By chapter first, sorted by interventions per article, so that a long chapter does not look busy just because it is long.

Chapter II is the centre of gravity: formation, preventive control, the application form, the EU central interface, the once-only principle (a document submitted to one authority is never asked for again). That is the two-working-day, EUR 100 company the 28th regime is being sold on. All 21 delegations wrote into it, 330 interventions, the most in the table and the most per article. The formation promise is being negotiated line by line, and with every contributing state involved it will come out of the Council changed.

Chapter VIII, the EU Employee Stock Option Plan, is two articles and 54 interventions from 16 states, the second-most per article in the document. Nearly all of it is about one question, whether the Council can legislate on tax under Article 114 TFEU at all. That argument is set out below, and it is the reason this chapter may end up in a separate instrument.

Chapter V, organisation, is where delegations cut rather than comment: 42 strikes across 11 articles. Chapter VI, the digital share register, shows the opposite pattern: 20 states wrote 133 interventions and only six strike text. Nobody wants the register chapter gone; they want more safeguards in it. The Netherlands and Austria object to a company’s own privately held register having constitutive effect (the entry itself creates the ownership) with no independent check, Spain wants shareholders’ tax residence and tax number recorded, and Czechia and Lithuania say their national law has no procedure to correct a wrong entry. Anti-money-laundering is the language they use; the real question is who fixes the register when it is wrong.

Ranked by distinct member states rather than by volume, the ten most contested articles are these.

Five of the twelve most contested articles are the formation pipeline: the application form (Article 13, the largest single pile in the document at 59 interventions), preventive control (14), the EU central interface (15), fast-track formation (16) and once-only submission (20). The fight over the fast company is a fight over what goes in the form and who checks it before the company exists.

Exit is contested as much as entry. Article 87, removal from the business register, drew 17 states, the same as preventive control. Member states want to know how an EU Inc. company leaves the register as much as how it enters, which is really a question of protecting creditors, and it will decide how cheap and fast a closure can be.

Article 4 is the one to watch. Sixteen delegations wrote 45 interventions on the provision that decides which national law fills the regulation’s gaps, the fourth most contested article in the document and the most contested in Chapter I. The European Parliament’s rapporteur deleted the same article outright in his draft report of 29 June 2026 (PE790.143v02-00, Amendment 79). Both co-legislators reached Article 4 independently inside the same fortnight. In the Council table only two of the 45 interventions strike text; the rest are comments and redrafts, and France records a Commission commitment to amend the article. In the Parliament it is simply deleted.

Governance is the other cluster: amendment of the articles of association (Article 50, 16 states), disqualified directors (22, 16 states), the company name (6, 15 states) and directors’ duties (44, 14 states and the most strikes outside insolvency). Article 79, taxation of warrants, is on the list for the legal-basis reason set out below. And Article 109, entry into force and date of application, drawing 14 delegations means the transition period is a live question rather than a formality: anyone planning around a start date should not treat the Commission’s timetable as fixed.

Article 107, on committees, is the only one of the 109 articles that drew no member-state intervention of any kind. That says something about comitology (the committee procedure behind implementing acts), not about the regime, so the useful threshold is not zero but three states or fewer. Eighteen articles sit at or under it, and they fall into four groups.

• Raising and managing share capital, Chapter VII. Issuance of first shares (Article 66), capital increase (70), pre-emptive rights (69), subscription of own shares (73, Malta only) and redeemable shares (76) drew one to three states each. Chapter VII as a whole drew the least attention of any substantive chapter, 9.6 interventions per article across 17 articles.
• How shares work, Chapter VI. Equality of shares and classes of shares (55, Malta only), voting rights (57, three states) and transfer of shares (58, three states).
• The final provisions. Accounting (105) and reporting and review (108) drew three states each, and Chapter XII is the quietest chapter at 6.8 interventions per article. Its only four strikes are on Article 109: three of them a character or two inside a date formula, and one phrase struck by Latvia, “month after the date of entry into force of this Regulation”. Articles 104 to 108 drew no strike at all.
• Other quiet articles. Payments (11), formation of subsidiaries (19), the two BRIS disclosure articles (26 and 29), general principles for branches (36, Sweden only), protection of class rights (51) and the costs of interconnecting electronic auction systems (99).

The legal basis is the one issue in this compilation that population arithmetic cannot settle, and eight delegations raise it in two different ways that should be kept apart.

Three challenge the basis of the whole instrument. Austria, page 40, at Article 4: “As confirmed by the CLS, relying on Art. 114 TFEU as the legal basis for the EU Inc. is not legally sustainable. Rather, Art. 50 could be invoked as the more specific legal basis, and a directive could be adopted on that basis. In AT’s view, however, a regulation would be possible only on the basis of Art. 352.” CLS is the Council Legal Service; TFEU is the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Slovakia’s opening statement on page 6 names “the risk that a regulation could be annulled if founded on an inappropriate legal basis”; Bulgaria, page 2, doubts that it is “appropriate to provide for a new company form laid down in a regulation”.

Five challenge the tax provisions specifically, and that group matters more, because it has a clean solution. Luxembourg, page 476: “LU cannot endorse the principle of including Article 79 in the proposal. LU has serious doubts as to whether Article 114 provides an appropriate legal basis for this part of the proposal.” Czechia, page 470, calls taxation decided by qualified majority “a dangerous precedent, which CZ rejects”, while saying it is “open to harmonisation in this area” under Article 115 TFEU. Estonia, page 471, says Article 114 “does not allow for the regulation of tax matters” while supporting the substance. Sweden, page 478, questions “whether article 114 is the correct legal basis in this regard”. Croatia proposes separating the tax provisions into a standalone act. Austria adds a distinct point at Article 86, page 515: Article 114(2) TFEU expressly excludes fiscal provisions from Article 114’s scope.

Czechia objects to the legal form and not to the substance. Estonia and Sweden object to both. Estonia does not support “the regulation of tax matters in the proposal, in particular the determination of the taxable moment for income derived from employee share options”, and wants a directive rather than a directly applicable regulation. Sweden is “as a principle opposed to increased harmonisation of taxes at EU level, in particular in the area of direct taxation”. Croatia’s carve-out would answer the objection to the legal form, not the objection to the substance.

Under Article 16(4) of the Treaty on European Union a qualified majority in the Council needs 55 percent of member states, 15 of 27, and 65 percent of the Union’s population. A blocking minority needs at least four states representing more than 35 percent.

The 21 delegations in this document could not adopt the regulation on their own if every one of them agreed tomorrow: 60.1 percent is below the 65 percent threshold. The six who did not write already hold 39.9 percent, above the 35 percent blocking threshold, and there are six of them, against the four the Treaty requires. The largest single risk to the 28th regime is not in the document.

Two of the absences have an explanation. Cyprus held the Presidency until 30 June 2026, and the Presidency compiles the table rather than writing into it. Ireland took the Presidency on 1 July 2026, the week after this table closed, and inherited a file it had not written into. Germany’s absence has none. Germany is missing from a proposal whose most politically loaded provision, board-level employee participation, is the one German company law is built around.

The delegations that did write have already put that question on the table. Eight of them warn, on Article 12, that a company could choose its member state of registration to escape employee-participation rules: Sweden’s drafting change moves the connecting factor (the fact that decides which country’s participation rules apply) from the registered office to the place of employment, Austria is open to the same, Malta proposes a paragraph that formation, conversion, merger or mobility “shall not be used to avoid, circumvent or weaken” participation rights, and Slovenia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Lithuania and Finland each name the risk outright.

Every intervention is either proposed text or a comment. That split sorts the 21 delegations into three groups. A delegation that wants to shape a regulation rewrites it. A delegation that thinks the instrument is built wrong writes down its objections instead. Most sit in between. The table is sorted by the share of proposed text.

Seven delegations are negotiating text. Estonia, Czechia, Malta, Slovakia, Sweden, France and Hungary write proposed wording for roughly half or more of what they file. Estonia proposes more text, as a share of what it files, than any other delegation, and with Czechia it struck the insolvency chapter provision by provision. Malta adds rather than cuts, 45 additions against 8 strikes, mostly on financing. Sweden put 11 interventions into Article 44 alone. France is the largest member state that redrafts, with 10 interventions on the application form, Article 13.

Seven are building a record. Lithuania, Portugal, Latvia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Austria and Poland file comments and almost no text. Austria is the outlier worth naming: the third-largest set of interventions in the document, 142, and not one line of proposed wording. That is what a delegation does when it thinks the instrument is on the wrong legal basis, which is what Austria says on page 40. It also carries 27 anti-money-laundering flags, the most of any delegation. Poland does the same at 49 interventions on 8.1 percent of the Union’s population. Between them: 191 interventions, zero proposed words. Portugal’s 111 interventions contain no additions at all.

Seven mix both. Luxembourg filed more than anyone, 210 interventions across every chapter, and the sharpest single objection in the document, on Article 79, page 476. That is what it looks like when a jurisdiction whose corporate-services sector has the most to gain and the most to lose takes a proposal seriously. Denmark records no additions and strikes 11 times: it cuts rather than proposes. The Netherlands, at 29 interventions, is quiet for a country of its size and strikes nothing. Spain carries 7 scrutiny reserves (a delegation’s formal “not yet” while its parliament or ministries examine the text), the most in the document.

• Monday 7 September 2026, 15:00 to 18:30 CEST The Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) sits. On its working calendar this is the sitting where the amendments to the Repasi draft report on the 28th regime come up. Unlike Council working parties, JURI sittings are webstreamed: watch live or replay on the JURI page. The agenda and tabled documents are on the committee’s meeting documents page.
• 10, 17 and 29 September 2026 The Council’s Working Party on Company Law meets three more times this month, all in closed session with no published readout (29 September meeting page). A newer drafting table, or a compromise text that becomes public on the register, would replace WK 9143/2026 as the current state of the Council’s text.
• Thursday 24 September 2026 Ministers meet in the Competitiveness Council, with a provisional policy debate on the file on the agenda (Council document ST 10983/26). It is the same Council whose working party wrote this table, one level up.
• Monday 28 September 2026, 15:00 to 18:30 CEST JURI’s next sitting after 7 September, and the one we expect to carry the committee vote on the Parliament’s mandate. Same webstream link as above.
• Any day: ST 11829/26 The Presidency compromise text of 17 July 2026 remains not accessible to the public on the Council register. It is the answer key. If it opens, every “uncontested as of 24 June 2026” statement above can be tested against it.
• Two articles where the institutions may diverge Article 4, which 16 delegations push on in the Council and the Parliament’s rapporteur deletes, and Chapter VIII, which eight member states say cannot rest on Article 114 TFEU. If the tax provisions are split into a separate act, the employee stock option plan gets its own timeline, separate from the company form.

The current procedural state, with dates, is on the progress tracker, and the official record is the OEIL procedure file 2026/0074(COD). The Parliament’s side of the same fortnight is in our read of the rapporteur’s draft report, and how the two institutions’ timetables fit together is set out in the process notes.

We parsed the PDF one text run at a time and recovered strike-through and underline from the lines drawn on the page, not from the text layer, which does not carry them. The output is 1,815 interventions, one row each, carrying page, chapter, article, delegation, block type, recovered markup, and the struck and added text. The article-level table behind this piece covers all 109 articles, the Annex and the nine opening statements, and its intervention counts sum to 1,815, which is the check that it covers the whole compilation. Every figure above was generated from that data in one scripted pass on 23 August 2026.

Anyone opening the PDF should know one thing about it. The right-hand column is a Word track-changes table: strike-through means a delegation wants text deleted, underline or a markup colour means added, and ordinary PDF text extraction destroys all of it. Estonia’s cell on page 378 reads, in extracted text, as a word-for-word restatement of Article 54(5); with the formatting recovered, one phrase is struck, and Estonia is cutting a cross-reference rather than endorsing a provision. Read the markup, not the extracted text.

Access was checked on the Council register on 15 August 2026. WK 9143/2026 INIT is served in full at an open address with a download link, its body pages carry a PUBLIC watermark, and its cover still reads LIMITE, the marking it carried when it was circulated; anyone can read it without filing a request. ST 11829/26, the compromise text of 17 July 2026, returns “Not accessible to the public” with no download link. Without it, the honest phrasing for everything above is “uncontested as of 24 June 2026”, never “agreed”.

Population shares are Eurostat figures for 1 January 2025, rounded. They are precise enough to show what sits near a threshold, and they are not the Council’s certified qualified-majority percentages, which are set annually and differ in the second decimal.

• Council document WK 9143/2026 INIT, General Secretariat, Brussels, 26 June 2026, “Proposal for a Regulation on the 28th Regime, EU Inc.: Table with Member States Drafting suggestions (Articles and Annexe)”, 618 pages, table updated 24 June 2026: full PDF on the Council register
• Council document ST 11829/26, Presidency compromise text of 17 July 2026: listed on the Council public register as not accessible to the public (checked 15 August 2026)
• Commission proposal COM(2026) 321 of 18 March 2026, the 28th regime corporate legal framework, procedure 2026/0074(COD)
• European Parliament draft report PE790.143v02-00, Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI), rapporteur René Repasi, 29 June 2026; Amendment 79 deletes Article 4
• Council Working Party on Company Law, meeting page for 29 September 2026, listing the 1, 10 and 17 September sessions
• Article-level dataset generated for this piece on 23 August 2026 from the formatting-aware parse of WK 9143/2026 INIT