Some background: https://tech.eu/2026/10/16/eu-inc-will-europe-blow-its-biggest-chance-to-get-startups-right/

I'm in favour of deeper integration, which is exactly why I think EU Inc deserves more critical attention here. Not because the proposal is unusually important, but because it is unusually simple. If you want to understand why the EU keeps failing on its own competitiveness agenda, this file shows the whole mechanism in miniature.

The case for it is well established. Letta and Draghi both identified fragmented company law as a structural barrier to scaling within the Single Market, and both pointed to a 28th regime as a remedy. The Commission's proposal from March delivered on that: fully digital incorporation within 48 hours, simplified company rules and a framework for employee stock options.

It leaves taxation and labour law with the member states. It costs no money, creates no new agency and harmonises nothing. In EU terms, this is about as easy as it gets.

And yet, according to the founders of the EU Inc campaign, it is being hollowed out. In an open letter to the heads of government, they warn that months of negotiation have stripped out the provisions that gave the proposal its value: free choice of the member state of registration, a common stock option framework, a genuine central European registry, and access for all companies rather than a narrowly defined category.

We have seen this exact film before. The Societas Europaea of 2001 survived negotiations, but with so many national variations that it became a vehicle for large corporates rather than growing companies. The Societas Privata Europaea, proposed in 2008 specifically for SMEs, never made it through the Council and was withdrawn in 2014.

The pattern goes well beyond company law. The Services Directive was substantially watered down before adoption in 2006. Capital markets union has been a stated priority since 2015 and remains largely unfinished. Banking union still lacks a common deposit insurance scheme.

The usual defence is that this is democracy at work. But I'd question how democratic it really is. The European Trade Union Confederation has called for the proposal to be strengthened or abandoned, arguing companies could register in states with weaker labour protection while operating elsewhere.

That concern deserves a serious answer, but the campaign's own position is that employees remain covered by the labour law of the country where they work. So I genuinely wonder how many of the people protesting against EU Inc have looked at what it actually contains, or whether opposition is being mobilised by national actors with narrow interests, as happened with the Bolkestein directive and the "Polish plumber" in 2005.

There is also a structural imbalance in who gets heard. Unions, notarial chambers, banks and national legal professions are organised and present in Brussels. The beneficiaries of EU Inc are entrepreneurs, founders, who have not yet started their companies, employees not yet hired and investors who have not yet invested. They have no lobby, because they don't exist yet. A process that weighs organised interests against people who are not in the room will predictably favour the status quo. That is procedurally legitimate. Whether it is democratic in any meaningful sense is another question.

Here is where I think this sub needs to look in the mirror. If EU Inc fails, I don't think bigger things will ever succeed in the current EU. Not a capital markets union, not a defence union, not fiscal integration. Not with 27 member states, unanimity or consensus culture in the Council, and every national interest holding a de facto veto. And I see no realistic path by which that structure changes, because changing it requires the same unanimity that blocks everything else.

What does work is smaller coalitions. Schengen and the euro both started among a subset of countries. The unitary patent was discussed for decades and only came into force in 2023, through enhanced cooperation that left out the countries blocking it. If integration happens at all, it will happen that way: a core group moving ahead, not the Union as a whole.

However much enthusiasm there is here for the federalist idea, I think we have to accept that it cannot be achieved in the EU's current form, and that the current form is not going to change.

Accepting that also means accepting the consequence. Europe will remain dependent on American and Chinese innovation, because our own does not scale.

Draghi already showed this: between 2008 and 2021, close to 30% of unicorns founded in Europe relocated their headquarters abroad, the vast majority to the US. The European Investment Bank adds that around 10% of EU scaleups relocate, with 85% of those going to the US. And it is getting worse, not better: according to Atomico, the share of founders with their first experience in Europe who incorporated their startup in the US rose from 10% in 2016 to 18% in 2025. That amounts to roughly 800 companies a year founded in the US by European founders instead of here.

So my question to this sub is not how we would have to fix the EU. It's whether we are willing to admit that we cannot, and what a federalist movement should be arguing for once we admit that.

Interview with the Mayor of Kharkiv on Running a City on Europe's Front Line with a message to all Europeans.

The initiative just started gathering signs and has some interesting ideas, for example about posing limits on evicting people after renovations using EU funds and reusing empty offices.

It also asks for a European Housing Agency to help coordinate efforts and funds.

What do you think of it?

Would the constitutions of the member states allow them to cede sovereignty to a higher body and merge into a larger nation? and if they don't can they be ammended? I do know Germany's constitution is a barrier as it has an eternal clause prohibiting the cession of sovereignty

Greenland is not part of the EU, despite forming the Kingdom of Denmark together with EU member continental Denmark and the Faroe Islands. So, technically, Greenland and continental Denmark have equal status as constituent parts of the same Kingdom of Denmark, much like Scotland and England within the UK. Yet continental Denmark is an EU member state, while Greenland is not part of the EU. By that same logic, could Scotland use the Danish example to rejoin the EU without leaving the United Kingdom?

On Monday (12 Oct) MPs will be debate the UK Rejoining the EU, thanks to this petition!

Coming after Andy Burnham's speech at the Labour Party Conference, over 25,000 people have written to their MP asking them to attend and to speak up for the UK to 'Apply to Rejoin the EU as soon as possible to increase growth in the UK'.

The next petition to 'Start negotiations now to Rejoin the EU' is already live and growing - if you are UK resident or a Brit anywhere, please sign it too!

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/771102

Let's keep this momentum going!

Frontex knew where the migrant boat was. So did the Libyan coastguard. What happened next raises serious questions about EU responsibility.

Hi everyone, Lucia from EUobserver here 👋 Wr wanted to share an investigation by our colleague Nikolaj Nielsen, because it raises a question we don't discuss enough when talking about Europe's borders: what happens to people after EU authorities pass their location to someone else?

On 19 June, a boat carrying 27 people, including children, was struggling in the Mediterranean.

Frontex issued a Mayday relay and shared its coordinates with the Libyan rescue centre. Around 90 minutes later, the Libyan coastguard arrived, struck the boat and threw people into the water. Some of those brought aboard were beaten.

Nobody died. But Frontex's own fundamental rights officer concluded that the Libyan operation violated the right to life.

And that's what makes this investigation particularly important.

The EU describes cooperation with Libya partly as a way to save lives at sea. Yet its own rights officials are documenting what happens when those rescue operations turn violent.

If European agencies know that the authorities receiving these coordinates have a record of violence, can they really separate themselves from what happens next?

One of the most persistent criticisms of European federalism is the fear of an overbearing superstate: a centralised Leviathan in Brussels micromanaging education, culture, and personal lives.

In a new essay, I argue that authentic sovereignty requires a dual boundary:

1. The continent as the minimum floor of power:
   To resist external coercion, Europe needs a single military command without national vetoes, sovereign technological supply chains (space, semiconductors, energy), and continental fiscal closure. Fragmented across 27 states, we remain chronically vulnerable to foreign blackmail and tax arbitrage.

2. The continent as the maximum constitutional ceiling:
   The federation must be strictly bound by the Single Responsibility Principle. Its mandate stops at the external shell and the fiscal rails of the commons. It must never touch education, culture, or voluntary associations.

The operative principle of true subsidiarity is not: "Brussels will solve our problems for us", but rather: "through Brussels, cities and regions can solve their problems themselves."

Internally, this unlocks real individual sovereignty: zero tax on labour, collective capture of natural monopolies, and an unconditional Citizen's Dividend providing the material power to refuse economic exploitation.

Real freedom isn't about tearing down every wall; it's about knowing where to build the only wall that matters.

Full essay and architectural diagram:
https://rolfst.substack.com/p/the-dual-boundary-of-the-shell?r=1fu3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Where do you draw the line between necessary federal competence and subsidiarity? Can this dual boundary persuade sceptics who fear centralisation?

Hi! Has anyone written their bachelor’s thesis on EU foreign policy? I really need some help, as my supervisor is currently dealing with an issue and isn’t able to help me at the moment.

What topics did you work on and what research problem do you think would be interesting to explore? I was thinking about doing something related to EU–Russia relations, but I can’t seem to come up with an interesting research hypothesis. I would like to prove a specific change in Russia determined something about the foreign policy of EUQ. I was also thinking about somehow connecting it to the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood.

I’m honestly a bit stuck at the moment and I mainly need some ideas for interesting research topics. Just the issue please!

Thank you!