On Wednesday 29 November, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs adopted its position on the proposal for a directive aimed at increasing the digitalisation of company law processes in order to reduce the administrative burden on European businesses.
Broadly supporting the Commission’s initial proposal (see EUROPE 13152/1), MEPs approve the issuing free of charge of an ‘EU Company Certificate’ containing basic information on companies to help them with tax procedures, calls for tender and/or applications for funding.
In their view, documents transmitted electronically to national trade registers should have the same legal effect as paper documents, according to a European Parliament press release. Furthermore, if the data remains valid, the companies listed should not be required to update it in the national registers. Cooperatives should also participate in national registers, says the parliamentary committee.
In addition, the Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS) should be linked to national registers of beneficial owners and insolvency registers.
In addition, the future rules will introduce a single digital multilingual model for issuing proxies. They will abolish the apostille, a formality allowing certain paper documents to be certified by means of a stamp. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)