One Market One Law Welcomes the Optional European Business law Regime (“28th Regime”) Paving the Way for a European Business Code
Brussels, March 18, 2026
Press release,
One Market One Law Welcomes the Optional European Business law Regime (“28th Regime”) Paving the Way for a European Business Code
The publication of the proposed regulation establishing an Optional European Regime (“28th regime”) for company law marks a decisive step towards the emergence of a genuine European Business Code, fully in line with the public-interest initiative One Market One Law, which advocates an optional European legal regime available to companies operating across borders.
Launched by businesses and legal practitioners engaged in the Single Market, One Market One Law aims to support the development, at EU level, of a coherent, optional and readable body of business rules that companies may choose to apply, thereby facilitating cross-border activity without replacing domestic systems.
By introducing a new European corporate form available in all Member States, the proposed regulation responds to one of the association's key priorities: offering SMEs, start-ups and scale-ups a practical legal vehicle enabling them to expand across the Union without having to navigate 27 different national regimes. The text provides a common set of rules designed to enable the creation of companies that are genuinely European from inception and constitutes a first building block of a broader European Business Code.
The US has the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and the United States Code. Africa has OHADA. China has one law. To become One Market, Europe must have One Law. The new “28th Regime” will create a legal vehicle that can be incorporated anywhere, quickly and at low cost, and operate seamlessly across the EU, with a modern and flexible capital structure that will work irrespective of national borders. This is a first and critical step towards a unified EU business code.
This first step illustrates the approach promoted by One Market One Law: a bottom-up, optional framework that reduces legal fragmentation, simplifies cross-border trade, and enhances legal certainty for companies and investors, thereby strengthening the EU's economic ecosystem and investment attractiveness.
In line with its mission to promote a more harmonised, accessible and competitive legal environment for the Single Market, One Market One Law calls for this company-law phase to be swiftly finalised and for the rapid preparation of additional optional instruments essential to a genuine European financial and business market: guarantees and security interests, a European loan agreement, European assignments of receivables, leasing and factoring mechanisms, and a truly European bond issuance framework.
Beyond company law, the association will support the adoption of further proposals covering other areas of business law, including, among others, financing and security law, the introduction of a European trust (fiducie), alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, and provisions specific to B2B contracts, with the ultimate objective of building an integrated European Business Code serving growth and competitiveness.
One Market One Law, a Brussels-based public-interest initiative, brings together entrepreneurs and business leaders, lawyers and legal professionals, economists and policy makers, as well as committed European citizens, all convinced that Europe must move faster, think bigger and be more competitive on a global scale. In the coming weeks, months and years, the association will work alongside the European institutions and European and national professional associations representing employers, trade unions and investors to advance this future European Business Code in the service of European unity, competitiveness, and a more integrated Savings and Investments Union.
Contact: contact@onemarketonelaw.eu
Website: https://www.onemarketonelaw.eu
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