A NEW (?) FRAMEWORK (?) ON DIGITALIZATION IN EUROPEAN (?) COMPANY (?) LAW?

Abstract

In this paper, I consider the digital tools present in the European Company law currently in force, and those that have been proposed in several occasions and by different bodies during the last fifteen years. I will focus in particular on the European Commission’s Proposal issued on April 25th, 2018, showing that it does not provide a comprehensive and innovative framework on digitalization in Company Law. On the contrary, its main purpose is to suggest the introduction of a harmonized system of online registration for companies throughout Europe, directly descending from the last available version of the repealed Proposal for the amendment of Single-Member companies directive. Such a procedure, nonetheless, is dealing just partially with Company Law, as it involves a public procedure, usually part of administrative law, and, even more meaningfully, it needs to develop a role for notaries where the intervention of such subjects is required by domestic law. Furthermore, besides highlighting the momentous role the domestic registers and the business registers’ interconnection system have achieved in the European Company Law, I will discuss some points in the latest Proposal and its Annex that seem to need a reconsideration.