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A practical document library for founders, operators, legal teams, and advisors preparing for EU Inc. and the 28th regime.
The EU Inc. formation process will be digital-first, the Commission will publish multilingual application forms and articles-of-association templates through an EU central interface. You will not need a paper formation pack. But you will still need to make decisions, prepare inputs, coordinate across advisors, and handle everything the EU system does not cover: tax, employment, equity, governance, and country-specific follow-through.
That is what this page is for.
Important: EU Inc. is still a legislative proposal, not final law. We label everything clearly, what can be prepared now, and what depends on the final text. This is not an official EU resource and not legal advice.
Table Of Contents
Everything below is organised by what you are trying to do. Each section explains what the proposal covers, what remains national, and where we are building readiness tools. The first packs are in development now, prioritised by community demand.
If you are still getting oriented, start with our tracker and newsletter archive at the28thregime.eu/blog. The short version: optional EU-wide company form, digital registration (48 hours, EUR 100 max), no minimum capital, multiple share classes, harmonised EU Employee Stock Option Plan, digital share transfers, simplified insolvency. Tax, employment, and court jurisdiction remain national.
The EU institutions will publish official forms and templates once the regulation is adopted and implementing acts are issued. These will include incorporation application forms, standard articles of association, registration guides, and the digital formation portal itself. We will link to every official document here as they become available. Our templates cover the decision and preparation layer around that official system: tax planning, conversion feasibility, equity structuring, and cross-border coordination.
Current official documents:
Based on community discussion and newsletter subscriber feedback, we are prioritising these first:
Tax is the single most discussed and least answered topic around EU Inc. The proposal does not harmonise tax. Corporate tax, VAT, payroll tax, withholding, and transfer pricing all stay under Member State rules. Where you register your EU Inc., and where you operate, still determines your entire tax position.
This matters because the registered-office decision is the most consequential choice you make, and it is fundamentally a tax decision. Which Member State's rates apply? What triggers VAT obligations in other countries? How will the EU-ESO be taxed at grant, exercise, and disposal? What happens to transfer pricing when you open branches? Most founders will not be able to answer these questions without structured guidance.
We are building tax readiness tools, jurisdiction comparison frameworks, VAT trigger checklists, cross-border issue spotters, and EU-ESO tax mapping, because this is where the real preparation gap is. Country-specific detail will follow once implementing rules are clearer.
Need country-specific tax review now? See our Partners page → Tax planning and structuring.
Get notified when the tax pack is ready →
The proposal (Articles 13–20) routes formation through a digital EU central interface. The Commission will publish the official application form and articles-of-association template via implementing acts. So the formation filing itself is handled. What is not handled is everything that comes before and after: deciding where to register, preparing founder and shareholder data, structuring shares, choosing a bank, and completing the post-registration follow-through, tax ID, VAT, employer registration, bank account, insurance.
The registered-office decision alone requires comparing tax treatment, court jurisdiction, banking access, and which national rules supplement the Regulation. The cap table needs to be investor-ready from the start if you plan to raise. The share class structure needs to be designed before formation, not after, because the proposal allows multiple share classes with different rights (Articles 51–53) and getting this wrong early creates expensive problems later.
We are building a founder readiness pack that covers the intake decisions, cap table design, share structuring, and a post-incorporation action checklist, everything you need to have clean before you touch the digital system and everything you need to do in the 30 days after.
Get notified when the founder pack is ready →
The proposal (Chapter VII, Articles 50–70) gives EU Inc. a flexible capital structure: no minimum capital, multiple share classes, digital share transfers without mandatory notary, and a digital share register. This is significantly better than most national company forms for fundraising.
SAFEs are not standardised by the proposal, they remain governed by national contract law, but the EU Inc. share mechanics make conversion and issuance much cleaner. What founders and investors still need is clarity on how SAFEs interact with the EU Inc. share system, what a data room should contain for an EU Inc. raising from cross-border investors, and how to structure a subscription round including board consent, shareholder consent, and pre-emption rights.
We are building a fundraising readiness pack covering SAFE preparation, data-room setup, share class design, and round execution, tailored to the EU Inc. structure rather than copied from US or national templates.
Get notified when the fundraising pack is ready →
This is one of the most significant parts of the proposal and the least understood. The EU-ESO (Chapter VIII, Articles 71–87) is not just a tax deferral, it is a full harmonised framework covering plan structures, eligible beneficiaries (employees, directors, and consultants of the EU Inc. and its subsidiaries), vesting schedules, exercise conditions, cross-border portability, and trustee arrangements.
For startups hiring across borders, this changes the equity conversation entirely. Today, offering stock options to an employee in Germany versus France versus the Netherlands means navigating three completely different legal and tax regimes. The EU-ESO creates one plan structure, but Member States still control tax treatment, so you need to understand how each country will treat the options at grant, exercise, and disposal, and what reporting obligations the employer has in each jurisdiction.
We are building an EU-ESO readiness pack covering plan design decisions, grant documentation, employee-facing explainers, and cross-border tax mapping. There is almost no independent content on this topic anywhere, and it matters more than most of the other proposal features for companies actually building teams.
Need EU-ESO implementation support? See our Partners page → EU-ESO.
Get notified when the EU-ESO pack is ready →
The proposal (Articles 41–49) covers management structures, shareholder meetings (including fully digital meetings and written resolutions), and board responsibilities. Once a company is formed, it needs an operating layer: board resolutions to approve transactions and appointments, shareholder resolutions for major decisions, an annual meeting process, conflict-of-interest handling, and ongoing register maintenance.
These governance patterns are fairly standard across company forms, so much of this can be prepared now. The EU Inc.-specific angle is that the proposal enables fully digital meetings and written resolutions by default, and the digital share register changes how you track ownership and file changes.
We are building a governance pack with board and shareholder resolution templates, meeting checklists, and a filing calendar, all adapted for the EU Inc. structure and digital-first approach. These will be among the first packs available because they do not depend on implementing rules.
Get notified when the governance pack is ready →
Employment law remains entirely national. The proposal does not harmonise labour law, social security, or employment contracts. This means that every time you hire someone in a new Member State, you are dealing with that country's contract requirements, termination rules, probation limits, non-compete enforceability, payroll obligations, and data protection rules.
What changes with EU Inc. is the combination of EU-ESO (equity across borders becomes structurally simpler) and branches (the "once-only" registration may reduce some administrative overhead). But the employment substance, the contract, the payroll, the social security, remains a country-by-country problem.
We are building employment issue lists that map what you need to review in each Member State when hiring, covering the legal requirements, payroll triggers, contractor classification risks, and onboarding steps. These are not country-neutral employment contracts, those cannot exist, but structured checklists that help you brief local counsel faster and avoid the common mistakes.
Need country-specific employment review? See our Partners page → Employment, payroll, and team rollout.
Get notified when the employment pack is ready →
The proposal (Articles 35–40) enables cross-border branch registration through BRIS with a "once-only" principle: you file branch data once through the EU central interface and it is distributed to tax and social-security authorities without resubmission. This is a real improvement over the current process, where opening a branch often means filing separately with the business register, the tax authority, the social-security authority, and the employer registration office in each country.
But the local follow-through is still local. The "once-only" system distributes your data, it does not complete your TIN application, open your payroll, or register you as an employer. Each country has its own timeline, requirements, and quirks.
We are building a branch readiness pack with a country rollout tracker, a checklist separating what the EU system handles from what you do locally, and a branch-manager authority template. If you are planning to operate in more than one Member State, this is the operational planning layer you will need.
Get notified when the branch pack is ready →
This is one of the most complex and highest-value areas. The proposal (Articles 106–107) allows existing national companies, GmbH, SAS, BV, SRL, and others, to convert to EU Inc. form. Legal personality continues, assets and liabilities transfer automatically, and the procedures follow the framework of Directive 2017/1132 which already governs cross-border conversions, mergers, and divisions.
But conversion is not simple. It requires shareholder approval, asset valuation, creditor protection mechanisms, and, for companies with employee participation (particularly German codetermination), an employee-participation review. Tax neutrality depends entirely on each Member State's treatment of the conversion, which is not harmonised. You also need to review every existing contract for change-of-form and change-of-control clauses, assess whether the registered office needs to move, and plan the operational transition.
We are building a conversion feasibility pack, starting with a GmbH-to-EU-Inc checklist because that is the most common scenario in the community, covering the preconditions, shareholder and creditor steps, employee-participation requirements, tax considerations, legacy-contract review, and seat/substance assessment. Cross-border conversion and merger/division decision guides will follow.
Need conversion support now? See our Partners page → Conversion from national company forms.
Get notified when the conversion pack is ready →
Now: We are publishing readiness content, the explanations, frameworks, and issue maps you see above, so you understand what is coming and can start internal preparation. The first downloadable packs (governance, founder readiness, tax planning) are in development.
Soon: Downloadable checklists, editable templates, and decision tools for each section above. We are building these in order of community demand, starting with the most requested packs listed above.
Later, once the final text and implementing acts are settled: Annotated articles-of-association guide, model EU-ESO plan, country-specific conversion guides, and detailed tax treatment comparisons.
Join the newsletter for EU Inc. tracker updates and pack release notifications.
We are building this library based on real demand. Tell us what you are working on and we will prioritise accordingly, and let you know as soon as the relevant pack is ready.
I am: Founder / Operator / Legal advisor / Tax advisor / Investor / Policy / Other
I need help with: New company / Existing company conversion / Fundraising / Hiring across borders / Branch expansion / Tax planning / ESOP / Not sure yet
Thank you for getting in touch!
One of our colleagues will get back to you shortly.
Have a great day!
Everything on this page is designed to help you prepare faster, compare options, and brief counsel more efficiently. It does not replace local legal, tax, payroll, or employment review where national rules still apply, and for EU Inc., national rules still apply to a lot.
For hands-on support, see our Partners page.