The “28th Regime”: What EU Inc Means for Mobility Venture Studios

A story we know well

Picture a software company building a marketplace for second-life EV batteries. The product works across borders by design: a battery pack decommissioned by a fleet operator in the Netherlands can be matched with a buyer in Poland within hours. The platform is live. Contracts are being signed. Revenue is real.

Then comes the Series A. The investor syndicate includes funds from Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Due diligence opens and the first question isn’t about the product. It’s about the GmbH structure and whether it can support a multi-jurisdiction cap table cleanly. Two months of legal re-work follow. Nothing about the business changed. Only the container.

We see this pattern regularly not only in our portfolio. The product is ready. The market is ready. The legal infrastructure of Europe is not. And it’s why the EU Inc proposal, the so-called “28th regime”, caught our attention.

What is EU Inc?

The idea is straightforward. Today, any founder who wants to operate across the EU has to choose between 27 national legal forms. EU Inc would add a 28th option: a single, EU-wide company form, digitally incorporated, built for cross-border operation from day one.

The goal is to reduce the setup friction, the re-org before every funding round, and the structural mismatch that slows down European ventures competing against US and Asian counterparts with the luxury of a single large home market.

The Commission is expected to present a concrete proposal in 2026.

Why this hits mobility ventures differently

We build companies that are inherently cross-border by nature. A fleet telematics platform doesn’t stop at the German border. A battery marketplace needs sellers in Stuttgart and buyers in Stockholm. Charging infrastructure needs to interoperate in Lisbon and Leipzig on the same day.

Every time one of our portfolio companies expands into a new EU market, they face the same stack of friction: jurisdiction-specific contracts with commercial partners, different insurance and liability frameworks, and in some cases entirely separate regulatory approval processes. A charging software venture needs to track certification requirements that vary by country. A battery marketplace has to manage compliance obligations that shift depending on where in Europe the asset physically moves.

As a venture studio, we don’t face this just once. We face it once per company, per market. The inefficiency compounds.

The opportunity, if it lands well

If EU Inc delivers what the Commission is promising, the impact would be structural and immediate for studios like ours.

The most direct benefit is spinout speed. Right now, launching a new venture with EU ambitions requires weeks of legal setup, notarization, and banking onboarding before a single line of product code is written in a commercial context. A standardized digital incorporation process removes that drag. Capital goes into product earlier.

The deeper opportunity is what happens before a Series A. Investors from Munich, Amsterdam, and London currently spend meaningful due diligence time decoding local legal structures before they can evaluate the actual business. A shared EU legal form standardizes the container so the conversation can focus on what’s inside it. That’s not a marginal improvement: it can meaningfully compress fundraising timelines.

There’s also a talent dimension. Building teams across borders today means navigating incoherent equity frameworks. A software engineer in Berlin and a business developer in Madrid can’t easily sit on the same option pool under current national rules.

For us specifically, there’s a first-mover advantage in understanding this framework early and building replicable playbooks for our portfolio.

The threats, if it doesn’t

Optimism needs to be earned. EU legislation has a well-documented history of promising simplification and delivering complexity.

The most likely risk is that EU Inc adds a 28th option without removing any of the other 27. Investors, acquirers, and banks will need time to build familiarity with the new form. And until they do, using it introduces friction rather than reducing it. A startup that incorporates as EU Inc and then tries to open a business account, run payroll across three countries, or complete a trade sale may find that a clean legal structure meets a very messy operational reality.

Tax and labor law will almost certainly remain national.

Uncertain: This is the most politically sensitive area. Founders who expect EU Inc to simplify their P&L or employment model will need careful expectation management. The legal wrapper changes. The underlying complexity beneath it may not.

There’s also regulatory execution risk. A framework agreed in 2026 can be substantially amended through secondary legislation in 2028. Founding a company on the assumption of stable EU Inc mechanics is a bet on political consistency over multiple election cycles.

A decision framework

Not every venture should default to EU Inc when it becomes available. The relevant questions:

Criterion	Points toward EU Inc	Points away from EU Inc
Target market	Multi-country EU from day one	Single national market long-term
Investor profile	International or pan-EU funds	National or strategic investors with country focus
Hiring footprint	Multi-country team planned early	Single-location team
Exit path	Pan-EU strategic buyer or financial sponsor	Trade sale to national incumbent
Product type	SaaS or data platform, low national regulatory load	Hardware requiring type approval or local operating permits
Timing	Incorporation after legal stability is confirmed	Incorporation needed within 12–18 months

Ventures with a digital-first, multi-country product and pan-EU investor base score well on the left column. But timing matters: no company should restructure prematurely on the basis of a proposal still in political formation.

A word for founders and partners

Europe’s mobility sector doesn’t have a product problem. Our portfolio companies are technically competitive with anyone in the world. What holds back scaling is structural overhead that has nothing to do with the quality of the solution.

EU Inc, done right, reduces that overhead. Done poorly, it adds to it.

We’re watching, preparing, and would welcome a conversation with anyone building in this space who sees the same tension.

(This post does not constitute legal advice. All analysis reflects the current state of discussions as of February 2026. Details are subject to change as the legislative process develops.)