The European Union (EU) has spent decades establishing a legal order for market integration. The economic freedoms enshrined in the Treaties, harmonisation through secondary legislation, mutual recognition and enforcement mechanisms have transformed the economic map of Europe. Yet the current competitiveness debate points to a more precise question. Market access exists in EU law. Can European firms use that access in practice, with enough speed and predictability to grow across the Union?
This is the difference between formal access and operational scale. It matters because Single Market fragmentation has multiple sources. It comes mainly from incomplete regulatory convergence and uneven implementation. In areas such as company law, insolvency, tax procedures, capital markets and supervision, national differences still raise costs for cross-border activity. Even when EU rules are in place, businesses encounter different administrations, registration procedures, compliance expectations, regulators and courts.
The services sector shows the persistence of this problem. EU action to remove barriers to cross-border services is still insufficient. The European Court of Auditors has noted that approximately 60% of barriers to the Single Market for services identified more than two decades ago remain in place. This is a useful reminder that legal integration can coexist with practical fragmentation.
There is now a narrow window for further Single Market integration. The “One Europe, One Market” roadmap gives the EU a political timetable through the end of 2027. This window may be smaller than it appears. Political will exists at the level of broad objectives. It becomes harder to sustain when reform reaches national legal systems, tax procedures, supervisory powers, insolvency rules or administrative practice. As several Member States enter electoral cycles in 2027, maintaining momentum around Single Market reform requires visible progress.
The proposed ‘EU Inc.’ corporate legal framework, part of the broader debate on a ‘28th regime’, should be read in this context. It seeks to reduce fragmentation without full harmonisation, by offering an optional EU-level corporate framework alongside national systems. Its significance lies in the attempt to design a company form for firms expected to grow across borders from the start. Digital formation, a central EU interface, flexible share structures and employee stock options reflect the practical needs of start-ups and scale-ups. In that sense, EU Inc. is more about the conditions for European growth, bringing venture-capital logic into company law.
The European Commission’s proposal for a regulation also reveals the limits of the current method of integration. The Commission opted for Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), i.e. the general internal market legal basis, since it allows adoption through qualified majority voting and makes the proposal politically feasible. Yet, Article 352 TFEU, commonly known as the ‘flexibility clause’, could arguably support a more autonomous and fully-fledged EU-level corporate regime, but would require unanimity among Member States and would make the legislative process more vulnerable to political deadlocks and delays.
EU Inc. should be judged by whether founders, investors and employees perceive it as more predictable, more financeable and more credible than the existing complexity of navigating 27 national legal orders and over 60 different national company forms.
The wider lesson is simple. The EU should not count legislative acts. It should count the barriers that are actually removed. An EU-level corporate form can help in some areas (e.g. low-cost formation, fundraising, talent access). It cannot, by itself, solve tax complexity, insolvency differences, labour law questions, weak enforcement or shallow capital markets.
In a global economy more visibly shaped by geopolitics and continental-scale competition, European firms have stronger reasons to treat the Single Market as their first scale market. For this to happen, transparency and pace matter. Monitoring delivery can increase accountability. Faster implementation can make reform visible to firms.
The strategic test ahead of 2027 is delivery, visible delivery. Can the EU transform the Single Market into a working environment in which companies can establish, finance themselves and grow on a European scale?
Dr. Apostolos Samaras holds a Ph.D. in European Law from the Law School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is a Research Fellow at the European Program ‘Ariane Condellis’ of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP).
