[stevenally]

In the USA California, Texas, Delaware etc all have different company registration and compliance processes. This has not damaged the business environment.

It should be left to each EU country to decide how to manage their company compliance processes. Those companies can then easily trade all over the EU.

You can easily set up a company in Ireland.

The EU does not to over reach with one-size-fits-all regulations. That will eventually lead to it's dissolution. It needs to concentrate on maintaining a free trade area.

[adamcharnock]

Well yes and no.

Yes you can form a company in Ireland while living in France. But you cannot get an Irish VAT number without a physical presence in Ireland.

And if – for example – France learns that you are running an Irish company from France (i.e. you have a 'permanent establishment' in France), they'll want you to file and pay French corporation tax. Which is likely sufficiently annoying that you may as well have formed a French company in the first place.

[bootsmann]

Its almost impossible for a fund from Germany to invest in a company from France and vice-versa. It is a significant problem!

[roenxi]

That sounds like a significant problem ... for either the Germans or the French to resolve. The only thing stopping foreign investors is law enforcement officers telling them to stop. The Germans can, literally, just not do anything except enforce basic property laws and foreign investment would pour money in.

I'm put in mind of US citizens who seem to be the lepers of international finance, often when I see prospectuses they have a lot of text on the the front saying "don't show this to anyone from the US" because they don't want to deal with the compliance costs of US law. In that case it is the US's problem and the US has an easy solution.

When people talk about larger regulatory frameworks they see the problem as the more permissive side is giving people options and want that shut down immediately. If the US started talking about global regulation to ease investment, for example, that means they don't intend to make it any easier but they do want everyone to adhere to US compliance ideas whether or not they do business in the US. It is a way for people with bad ideas to make the world worse. I'd assume the situation in Europe turns out similarly.

[lazide]

Each of those places (besides Delaware, kinda) has economies larger than a large chunk of the EU.

[embedding-shape]

Yeah, we've realized that, that's why we keep iterating on the union :)