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Drafting European law for economic activities must not be done suddenly by substituting national laws. This is why it has to be drafted progressively in several stages. The first comprises collating regulations, directives and recommendations according to their category via consolidation-compilation, so that an accessible normative base can be formed. In virtue of this the report suggests the interconnexion of the EUR-Lex and N-Lex portals to improve accessibility and legibility of European standards in all of the Union’s languages. It suggests the integration of jurisprudence as well as the popularisation of legal concepts specific to each Member State (like the French idea of “good faith”).
Company mobility in the European area must be built on harmonised rules, to provide them with the best adapted tools, for which codification-modification will be employed. This will be built bottom-up, to provide tools that match the stages of a company’s life.
A new kind of shared European law modelled on the simplified joint-stock corporation (SAS in France “sociétés par actions simplifiées”), would allow SMEs to move within the EU according to common rules and would imply the same rights and obligations for managers, shareholders and third parties. The flexibility of this legal form appears adequate for it to be extended across Europe.
In order to offer entrepreneurs complete legal solutions, it seems pertinent to develop different standard contracts. Apart from tenancy agreements, other legal contracts such as insurance contracts, sales contracts and payment guarantees must be provided for. Other European inspired models such as the districts and networks in Italy could also be a source of thought into the legal forms put forward. This new arsenal could be used by businesses which decide to set up in third countries supported by a tax break, if the said business chooses this European legal form.
The development of the interconnection between the various registers in the Member States via the Business Registers Interconnection System (BRISS), should be developed, and notably between European legal digital resources and legal data.
Codification-compilation allows the detection of contradictions between certain texts and the harmonisation of some parts of the law, apart from fundamental laws, such as distribution and consumption laws. In the laws now being drafted – in the digital area for example – codification-modification is possible, without causing opposition. Hence, for example, I suggest accessibility to the standard via a compilation of the existing ones. The codification work would help highlight areas in business law which require modification, removal or strengthening. I suggest a pragmatic approach for the drafting of tools for businesses by looking into the creation of new standards tailored to business requirements at each of these stages.