Europe Is Not Open for Dynamic Business Just Yet. Check Back in 2027.

Friedrich Merz doesn't do understatement. When Germany's Chancellor stands at a podium and tells the world that Europe has "wasted incredible potential for growth in recent years by dragging its feet on reforms and unnecessarily and excessively curtailing entrepreneurial freedoms," he's not offering mild criticism. He's delivering a verdict.

The EU built the most sophisticated regulatory architecture in human history. It also forgot to leave room for a business to operate inside it.

The Answer to Over-Regulation Is More Process

Enter EU Inc. — the European Commission's proposed solution to the problem Merz identified. Announced at Davos in January, EU Inc. promises a single pan-European company structure, enabling businesses to operate seamlessly across all 27 member states under one standardised legal framework. Registration in 48 hours. Fully digital. Minimum capital of €1.

On paper, it sounds like exactly what Europe needs.

In practice, the EU currently has 27 national legal systems and over 60 available forms of limited liability company. EU Inc. doesn't replace any of them. It sits alongside them as a 28th option — the so-called "28th regime" — requiring agreement between the European Parliament and the Council of all 27 member states before a single company can register under it.

The legislative process normally takes 12 to 18 months, though there is stated political will to finalise adoption by end of 2026. First registrations are expected in early 2027.

So Europe's answer to the innovation gap is: wait another year, then we'll have a framework to discuss the framework.

Meanwhile, in Delaware

An entrepreneur in the United States can incorporate a company in Delaware in under 24 hours, from anywhere in the world, with minimal capital, and immediately access the largest single capital market on earth. No 27-government alignment required. No trade union consultations about worker rights in the articles of incorporation. No inter-institutional legislative procedure is measured in calendar years.

The EU had 331 unicorns compared to 1,963 in the US as of 2025. That gap is not a coincidence. It is the compounded result of founders making a rational choice — go where the conditions favour growth, not where the conditions require a lawyer in every capital city.

EU Inc. is a genuine attempt to change that calculus. The intention is serious. Without such structural changes, Europe risks continued migration of talent and capital to more integrated jurisdictions. Nobody inside the Commission disagrees with the diagnosis.

The problem is the cure takes longer than the illness can wait.

The Real Cost of Regulatory Culture

Merz's critique cuts deeper than process. He argued that the single market was created to build the most competitive economic area in the world, but has instead produced a regulatory burden that now undermines competitiveness. That inversion is the defining story of European economic governance for the past decade.

Regulation compounds. Each new directive is written in response to a real problem, defended by a legitimate interest group, and passed with good intentions. But the aggregate effect is a business environment that puts start-ups in a straitjacket - with compliance costs exceeding its first year of revenue. Where expanding across borders requires reincorporation in each new jurisdiction, and where the fastest-moving founders vote with their feet long before any emergency brake gets pulled.

Merz put it plainly at the Munich Security Conference:

Europe must stop the limitless growth of bureaucracy and regulation that hampers innovation and entrepreneurship. He's right. He has also been saying it since January without a single directive being repealed.

What This Means for Business in Central and Southeastern Europe

For businesses operating in markets like Romania — where the growth story is real, the talent base is deep, and EU membership provides structural credibility — the regulatory environment is both an asset and a constraint. Access to the single market matters. The cost of navigating it also matters.

The companies that thrive in this region are those that understand both sides of that equation: seizing the opportunity that European market access provides, while structuring intelligently enough not to be buried by the compliance machinery designed to govern it.

EU Inc. may eventually help. But eventually is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

And even the team at Lighthouse PR — who have built careers out of finding the right words for the wrong situations — would struggle to put a credible spin on this one.

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About the Author

Steve Gardiner (exec MBA) is a senior marketing and commercial leader at Lighthouse PR, bringing global experience from Accenture, Electronic Arts, Virgin Media, Telekom, and Etisalat. Latterly, as VP Business at Etisalat, he was responsible for $1.8B in revenue.

Today, Steve applies his strategic, marketing, and growth expertise to support Lighthouse PR clients as part of the agency’s service offering.

About Lighthouse PR

Lighthouse PR works with a select number of organisations across Central and Southeastern Europe, delivering media relations, reputation management, crisis communications, social media and an extensive range of marketing services — always led by senior practitioners. We hold exclusive membership for Romania and the Republic of Moldova in both the Eurocom worldwide PR network and the CCNE, Europe's leading crisis communications network.

Lighthouse PR: Clear. Concise. Convincing.