My Dear German friends, please accept that EU-inc is a massive boost for EU competitiveness. Continuing to block progress here only proves that the EU is good at making promises on paper but fails to deliver real change.
The reason this "28th regime" actually works—and bypasses the previous vetos — is that it’s optional. It doesn’t try to force Germany to change its local GmbH laws or kill the notary system overnight. Instead, it creates a parallel, voluntary path. Berlin doesn't have to give up its red tape for local shops, but they have to let a "Unified European Company" exist alongside them.
If we let national pride or local bureaucracy stop this again, we are essentially telling our best founders to leave for the US. Let’s stop protecting red tape and start protecting our future.
> This idea was made by French and German government
It is true, but lets face it - it is just a high-level proposal. Better than previous ones for sure, but still just a proposal.
And there is a massive gap between the PR and the legal reality. Germany and Austria already torpedoed the previous attempt (the SUP) specifically because it allowed online formation without a notary.
So I would advise against certainty in that the fight is over. I also don't want to wait another 10 years. Honestly by that time just setup topco in UK and if series A will come just do the flip later if you don't want to go to SV straight away.
> Reading this thread, I do not get Germany's worship of notaries and notarizations.
No-one here worships them, they're just an obscenely rich entrenched institution running a racket as the gate keepers of certain notarized acts and doing anything in their power to lobby against innovation.
I could also ask you why U.S.-Americans worship a horribly broken school system or love lacking consumer and privacy protections. The answer is simple, it's not worship.
What I find funny is that in Germany, you can only buy a house with a notary to prevent shady things (reasonable), but up until 2023, you could literally buy the entire thing with cash, without having to provide any proof of the origin of the funds.
The last time pan-European private companies (SPEs) were seriously proposed (2008) opposition from the German government blocked the proposals, the idea limped along until finally being ditched in 2014 after disputes in the European Parliament about worker representation on boards.
SPEs were supposed to follow on from SEs (public companies, introduced in 2004) and SCEs (cooperative societies, introduced in 2006).
National sovereignty is not national pride. Paying company taxes to the 28th regime evicts tax contributions to the company's home nation. Massive German tax money is already today used for non-national interests. EU-inc makes this only worse.
I don't understand the tax objection. The 28th regime changes corporate law, not fiscal law. A Berlin-based "EU-Inc" still pays full taxes (Körperschaftsteuer, Gewerbesteuer, etc.) to the local Finanzamt. It isn't a disembodied tax haven - it just standardizes the legal wrapper.
You are right that this threatens the status quo, though. If this works, founders based in Germany will likely abandon the GmbH. That will require swallowing some national pride and admitting that the current system is simply a less efficient, less competitive legal form for high-growth companies.
One thing I think is also worth mentioning are labor rights. I am not arguing against the German model of employee protection. Mitbestimmung could be viewed as a good thing, even if it will mean less power to the VC and / or founders. And frankly, I don't care if the consensus forces strict, German-style Mitbestimmung on the EU-Inc. Stricter form of EU-INC is still vastly better than nothing at all.
This is wrong on so many levels. The German economy profits _a lot_ from the membership.
You can't just look at the monetary in/out flows to/from EU accounts but to the system as a whole.
For example, decades of pegging the value of the currency down, thus facilitating exports on a massive scale and thus pushing up the performance of whole industries, without other member states that would have had their currency devaluated being able to compete on prize.
They probably didn't list any because estimating the upsides versus the downsides is what it's about, and that's very hard to quantify. Suggesting, like you seem to, that there are no upsides to the German economy whatsoever, is just not a serious argument so doesn't actually deserve a serious answer.
I agree with your characterisation of what is going on, and at some point, the EU states will have to decide for full fiscal integration or for removing the common currency. You can't have a common currency without a common fiscal union. So we either have to integrate more or desintegrate more, this inbetween we have now is not working very well. Speaking as a European, not sure what is better.
Not related to the comment, but in general I agree with you.
You can't have a single monetary system without complete unification, including tax systems, budgeting systems, governance models, retirement systems, benefits. I mean, you can, like we have now, but it's not sustainable, and eventually we all have it worse.
As a European, I would not want to go that way, since I'm afraid such a unified EU will be a bureaucratic monster that is even more centralized than the USA, and way more autocratic than any current EU state.
I'd rather take a step back, dissolve much of the EU's competences, and go back to pure trade union, dissolve the EURO as a currency, and let every member state take sovereign decisions on their own.
Even more centralized than the USA? That must be an outsider's view. You are aware that each state has its own tax laws? Corporate laws? Even criminal laws and traffic laws? And so on? Obviously there is federal law, too, but that's more of an umbrella covering all states in addition to local laws. The USA is a federation, just like Germany, Switzerland, or Austria are federations, and one common complaint you get out of these nations all the time is that they are not centralized enough!
The EU, on the other hand, is not a federation, it is a association of nations trying to figure out how to go together, be it as a federation or something different, because in today's world you need size and power to survive. Any EU state alone would be insignificant on the world stage and being sidelined one way or the other. The most powerful inside the EU would suffer the most, e.g. Germany or France, because while the EU is second or third on many metrics, the individual nations are small. Depending on which ranking you look at, the EU is just behind the USA in military and economic power, sometimes it is behind China in economy, too.
The strongest individual economic power of the EU is Germany, which globally usually comes in 4th place after the USA, China, and the EU as a whole. But this is deceiving, when you look at the absolute numbers. Germany's output is impressive for its size, but is still only about a quarter of China's! Germany alone is a dwarf and without the EU would be inconsequential. The post-Brexit UK is just learning this the hard way and all the sovereignity does not matter a damn. The top leadership of EU nations are not stupid, even if they could explain their reasoning better, and thus try to keep the EU going, despite its many flaws.
I recently became much more pro-total-unification, so let me give you this counterpoint: individually, European nations are no match to the major superpowers, neither economically nor militarily. We'll get gutted by divide-and-conquer approach. In contrast, bound much closer together (particularly with some form of pan-european armed forces), the EU would become a proper global superpower and a counterbalance for the USA and China.
There is not a single example of a multiethnic or culturally diverse empire or state that was successful after the rise of nation-states at the end of the 19th century.
All of them crumbled either peacefully or in bloody wars.
Why do you think such a bureaucratic monster that no one really wants would be an exception?
Maybe we can try it again in the 24th century, when the humans evolve enough, but for now, your best bet for a successful country is either an ethnonational or religion-national state.
You cant really believe any of the EU countries actually want to work together? The EU was only possible with the premise of countries keeping their autonomy. Believe me when I say that us Germans would rather go to war than merge with France, just as an example.
>> - yes, German taxpayers are indeed funding bicycle lanes in foreign countries
Just for people to know this, we are talking about 44Mn€ (20Mn€ + 24Mn€) of money in Peru as the commentator mentions below. It is wasteful but it has practically no effect on Germany. There are 1000x things that Germany does within Germany that moves the needle more than the talking about this rounding error. But that requires introspection and ownership of responsibility - both alien to the country’s normal compliance attitude of working.
That's the same fallacy as claiming that rich people save money by donating to charity.
Simple example:
- Germany gives 100 € to other EU states
- Those states 100 € to buy made in Germany goods
- German companies have 10 € profits from those sales
- German state collects 5 € from those profits
In summary, German taxpayers paid 100 € so the state can collect 5 € taxes, and companies another 5 €. Not a very good deal.
And this calculation is crazy optimistic, because it assumes that all money that Germany gives to other countries will be used to purchase German good. In reality, they will be spent willy-nilly and German companies may not see even 1 € in return.
This calculation is flawed. German state collects much more than 5€, because there is VAT etc and, of course, employees of that company pay income tax from their share of that 100€ they just got back.
What people like you dont understand is what we get back from investing into foreign countries. We dont just build bicycle lanes there because we are such nice people.
This can happen without putting the most part of intensive payload in a form of external dependencies that can be cut at any point by many factors, while losing all the skills and knowledge on how to effectively plant and harvest. Qualified farmers don’t appear magically over night, let alone people with the passion required to invest their own life into it.
And exporting the model that ravaged one own land, selling the poison that was forbidden in the countries exporting it, what kind of behavior is that? Letting some land having a bit of rest while the same depletion process is applied elsewhere, how fair is that?
I've asked before - I am not clear what the massive boost is other than saving a few days or weeks at the beginning. I believe all taxation, labor compliance and other such regulation is still the same as the status quo. The one time ease of setup doesn't seem to be worth the ongoing hassle of dealing with the same crap, just with the added friction of a new and unfamiliar entity structure. What am I missing?
Its important to understand the context. Germany, and Europe in general, is basically like a falling empire. It will be less and less significant and life won't get any better than it is relatively speaking. The same will almost certainly happen with the US, but first goes Europe.
Unfortunately citizens and therefore ruling elites of empires fueled by relatively extremely high standard of living for decades in comparison to the rest of the World always have very hard time swallowing their national pride. They have built very elaborate conceptual framework of linking their nationality to the level of relative success, fueled by politicians who want to make people feel good again about their nationality.
Just look at the news, almost everything directly or indirectly is linked to the concept "nation".
And in almost all cases of empires a natural consequence of their fall is war. So, it is very important to set expectations right.
Are you foretelling the dissolution of the British Empire which happened many decades ago? Are you saying Algeria will soon be free of French colonial rule? Is your middle name Nostradamus?
It isn't prophecy. The Harvard Belfer Center study (Thucydides's Trap) analyzed 16 cases in the last 500 years where a rising power challenged a ruling empire: 12 of them ended in war.
The UK is actually the perfect example of this danger. The British Empire didn't dissolve peacefully - it was effectively destroyed by WWI and WWII while trying to suppress a rising Germany.
The subsequent transfer of hegemony to the US was a rare statistical anomaly (a "special case" driven by shared culture and total British exhaustion), but the Empire’s fall itself was catastrophic.
The pattern is violence, not peace. And remember that other aspiring nations to maintain it's position as Empire actively acting to destabilize situation in other states. The reason is simple - it is easiest way to maintain their status.
Brexit for instance was a boon for everybody but UK and EU. There is clear data already about Russian intervention. Recent overt US intervention into ensuring UK remaining separate and EU becoming separate. Think about it.
Sure, but my point is that all that is in the past. The British Empire already fell, and so did all the other European colonial powers. These days, when I think of empire, countries like the US, China or Russia fit the bill much more than the EU, which is struggling to reach that level of integration and influence.
> These days, when I think of empire, countries like the US, China or Russia fit the bill much more than the EU, which is struggling to reach that level of integration and influence.
Of course! Especially because there is no unified army control.
But this requires giving more context. We can't forget that there are ways, especially ways made by empires, to force other nations to go to war not only as an ally but also to make them less relevant and take a hit also.
One of the main factors which makes this more probable, is what op mentioned, the raise of fascism and combatant militaristic attitudes exacerbated by the fact that their own nation / empire is a falling empire. And EU didn't fell yet, it is huge economy with more people than the US.
The reason this "28th regime" actually works—and bypasses the previous vetos — is that it’s optional. It doesn’t try to force Germany to change its local GmbH laws or kill the notary system overnight. Instead, it creates a parallel, voluntary path. Berlin doesn't have to give up its red tape for local shops, but they have to let a "Unified European Company" exist alongside them.
If we let national pride or local bureaucracy stop this again, we are essentially telling our best founders to leave for the US. Let’s stop protecting red tape and start protecting our future.