Three events in three days. A central banker in Vienna, an industry summit in Antwerp, an informal European Council at a Belgian castle. Different stages, different audiences, the same conclusion: Europe's competitiveness problem is a fragmentation problem, and the 28th regime has become the consensus answer.
On Tuesday, February 11, ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel delivered a lecture at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, calling the 28th regime "a true game changer." On Wednesday, EU leaders and industry chiefs gathered in Antwerp for the European Industry Summit. On Thursday, heads of state convened at Alden-Biesen for a summit focused on competitiveness, where Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa openly discussed enhanced cooperation as a fallback if not all 27 member states get on board. French President Emmanuel Macron set a June deadline for the broader economic reform package.
The EU Inc proposal is confirmed for March. And the political machinery behind it just shifted into a higher gear.
Schnabel's case: not decline, but scale
Schnabel's speech, titled "Made in Europe," is the most rigorous institutional endorsement the 28th regime has received to date. Rather than making a political argument, she built an economic one, methodically dismantling the narrative that Europe is a continent in decline before identifying the one structural weakness that does hold: a lack of scale.
Her argument starts with a correction. Europe is not poorer than it looks because Europeans lack productivity. They work fewer hours. An employee in the United States works about 40 days more per year than an employee in the euro area. If Europeans matched American working hours while holding productivity constant, euro area GDP per capita would jump 21%, closing roughly two-thirds of the transatlantic income gap.
Europe is also more equal. The top 10% of earners in the United States take home 37% of national income after taxes. In the euro area, the figure is 27%. The typical American, Schnabel pointed out, lives in a $45,000 economy, not the $67,000 headline number.
But sustaining Europe's social model requires growth, and growth requires productivity, and productivity requires scale. European firms operate in a market of 450 million consumers that still behaves like 27 separate ones. Internal barriers, according to Schnabel, are equivalent to tariffs of 96% on services and 67% on goods. In some sectors, the figures are even higher.
Her solution: a 28th regime, a unified European corporate framework that lets companies operate across the entire Single Market under one set of rules. "It would allow Europe to compete as one economy rather than 27," she said, "and help create something Europe has long been missing: a true 'Made in Europe' brand."
This is not a startup founder or a VC talking. This is a central banker. The endorsement carries weight precisely because the ECB has no institutional stake in company law. Schnabel is making the macroeconomic case: fragmentation suppresses scale, scale suppresses productivity, and productivity is the only sustainable path to maintaining European living standards.
Antwerp: where industry met politics
The Industry Summit in Antwerp was a different kind of event. Where Schnabel made the macroeconomic case, Antwerp carried a sharper sense of urgency from industry leaders facing tangible losses.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever opened with numbers that sounded like a warning: in the past four years, closures in the European chemical industry have increased sixfold. Europe has lost 10% of its chemical production capacity. "In countries like ours, Germany, the Netherlands and France, the situation is simply dramatic at the brink of an existential crisis", he said. De Wever identified three priorities: innovation, productivity, and competitiveness.
The industry side came prepared. Building on the 2024 Antwerp Declaration, which now has backing from over 1,000 companies, business leaders presented an action plan titled "From Ambition to Delivery." The core demands: eliminate regulatory incoherence, reduce reporting burdens, and bring energy costs closer to global competitors.
Von der Leyen: "fragmentation on steroids"
Commission President von der Leyen arrived with a phrase that captured the political moment. She described the current system of 27 different national regulatory frameworks as "fragmentation on steroids."
Her speech to the European Parliament laid out the priorities. The EU needs to deepen the Single Market. It needs to cut red tape, particularly the "gold plating" where member states add extra regulation on top of EU directives. And it needs to mobilize capital. "Our companies need capital right now. So let's get it done this year," she said.
Then the confirmation: the Commission will propose the 28th regime in March.
Alden-Biesen: enhanced cooperation on the table
Von der Leyen and Costa held a joint press conference where both explicitly discussed enhanced cooperation as a viable path for the 28th regime and the Savings and Investment Union.
"I want it by 27, but if it is necessary to speed up the whole process, we will go by enhanced cooperation," von der Leyen said. Costa struck a more cautious tone, emphasizing he would "work to avoid" a two-speed Europe, before adding: "If it doesn't work, of course, the Treaty of Lisbon offers several solutions. One of them is enhanced cooperation."
Enhanced cooperation is an EU treaty mechanism that allows a minimum of nine member states to move ahead without unanimity. It has been used before: for the Unitary Patent, for divorce law, and most recently for the 90 billion euro Ukraine loan that bypassed Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
Macron went further, setting a concrete deadline. "What we decided today is that between now and June, we will have to finalise the agenda," he said. "If in June we don't have concrete prospects and concrete progress, we will continue with enhanced cooperation."
The support was broad. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke of a "strong sense of urgency." Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, once skeptical of multi-speed Europe, said the current moment had changed her mind: "If you had asked me five or ten years ago, I would have said no. Now you ask me today, and then I would say yes."
Mario Draghi attended the summit as a special guest and recommended using enhanced cooperation to "move faster" in high-priority areas.
The message from Alden-Biesen is unambiguous: the 28th regime is coming, and the political leadership is willing to let a coalition of the willing move ahead if consensus at 27 proves too slow.
The critics
Not everyone is on board. Esther Lynch, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), used the occasion to push back hard, calling the 28th regime a "dead end" and a "complete distraction" in an interview with Euractiv. Her argument: the real obstacles for startups are access to capital and market fragmentation in areas like tax and labor law, not company incorporation. A new corporate form, she contends, does not fix those problems.
The criticism previews the legislative battle ahead, even if it does not undermine the core case for the 28th regime. Labor standards, employee protections, and social rights will be flashpoints in the parliamentary process. If the 28th regime is perceived as a mechanism to circumvent national worker protections, union opposition could complicate its passage.
The question is whether the proposal can be designed to neutralize this concern. A voluntary corporate form that includes robust baseline protections for workers would cut the ground from under the ETUC's argument without weakening the core value proposition: one company, one set of rules, 27 countries.
What this week means for the 28th regime
The Commission proposal in March will not be the final regulation. Legislative proposals go through the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. The ordinary legislative procedure takes 12 to 18 months on average, sometimes longer. Amendments, negotiations, and political horse-trading will follow.
But the political foundation laid this week makes several outcomes more likely.
The proposal will come in March. Von der Leyen has now confirmed this publicly and repeatedly. Costa and Macron have set June as the deadline for broader progress. Backing away would cost the Commission credibility at the moment when its competitiveness agenda is its central narrative.
The instrument will be voluntary. Companies choose to incorporate under the 28th regime. National company forms remain. This makes adoption politically easier because no member state is forced to change its own corporate law.
The enhanced cooperation option creates urgency. Member states that drag their feet risk being left behind while a coalition of the willing moves ahead. That dynamic tends to accelerate consensus.
The scope may be broader than startups. Schnabel explicitly described the 28th regime as open to "firms of all sizes and sectors." The initial EU Inc campaign was driven by the startup ecosystem, but the political argument has expanded. When a central banker talks about scale for European industry, the audience is not just founders raising seed rounds. It is mid-cap manufacturers, cross-border service providers, and any company that finds the current patchwork of national regimes an obstacle to growth.
And the opposition will center on labor, not on the principle of harmonization. The ETUC's intervention signals where the fight will be. The legislative debate will not be about whether Europe needs a unified company form. It will be about what protections that form includes.
The legislative timeline remains uncertain. But the political timeline just became a lot clearer. The 28th regime has backing from the Commission, endorsement from the ECB, a 492-to-144 vote of support from the European Parliament in January, backing from the three largest member states, a June deadline from the French president, and the explicit willingness of EU leadership to bypass holdouts.