Yesterday, the EU decided to revise its company law rules so that they remain fit for purpose in the digital age. The aim is to achieve greater efficiency, transparency and legal certainty through the use of digital tools.  

Hence, the presidency of the EU Council reached a provisional agreement with European Parliament's representatives on a draft directive that will facilitate and promote the use of online solutions in a company's contacts with public authorities throughout its lifecycle.

The new rules will ensure inter alia as follow:

• companies are able to register limited liability companies, set up new branches and file documents for companies and their branches, to the business register fully online;
• national model templates and information on national requirements are made available online and in a language broadly understood by the majority of cross-border users;
• rules on fees for online formalities are transparent and applied in a non-discriminatory manner;
• fees charged for the online registration of companies do not exceed the overall costs incurred by the member state concerned;
• the 'once-only' principle, whereby a company would only need to submit the same information to public authorities once;
• documents submitted by companies are stored and exchanged by national registers in machine-readable and searchable formats;
• more information about companies is made available to all interested parties free of charge in the business registers.

Retrieved  from: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019/02/04/eu-company-law-adapted-to-the-digital-era/

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