Company registration in Europe 

The Company Law Directives

The Member States of the European Union are subject to a series of directives on company law. Each of the Member States is obliged to implement the requirements of the directives, which are agreed by the Council of Ministers, by passing legislation in its own parliament.  Apart from the formal status which they have within the EU, the directives serve as a useful benchmark to other countries in developing their own law and procedures.

The First Directive provides a framework by requiring each Member State to maintain a file in a central register, commercial register or companies register for each company registered.  It goes on to specify the documents and information which must be included in the file.  All the documents and information in question must be available to anyone on application in writing.  The charge for this service must not exceed the administrative cost of providing it.  

Recent changes to the First Directive require that, by 1 January 2007, all Member States will provide for documents and information to be both filed and made available to the public by electronic means.  

The Commerce Registers of Europe

Following successful conferences in Latvia (1998) and Sweden (1999), when they met in the United Kingdom in October 2000 the official bodies concerned with business registration in various European countries established a European Commerce Registers' Forum,  initially with 21 member countries.  The Forum has responsibility for convening annual conferences and working groups have been established to consider areas of common  interest to the official register authorities in the countries concerned. These include developments in European law, registration practice and technological changes. This has had particular relevance in the context of changes to the First Directive.

Recent conferences have been in Italy (2001), Norway (2002), Spain (2003), France (2004) Ireland (2005) and   Amsterdam (2006).  The next conference will be in Riga, Latvia in June 2007.

The European Business Register network

This network was developed as a project funded by the European Commission but is now a commercial operation managed by a European Economic Interest Grouping - EBR EEIG.  The members of the EBR are from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine.  Company information from any of these countries is available in a standard form and a choice of languages from distributors in any of the countries.