Last year brought a subtle yet undoubtedly significant step forward in the digitalisation of the EU and a further expansion of the Once Only Principle.
This principle means that a document submitted once to an authority in one EU Member State should not be requested again in another Member State. Public authorities are expected to share documents and the information they contain as part of cross-border cooperation, thereby reducing the administrative burden on businesses associated with obtaining repeated extracts from commercial registers, beneficial ownership registers and other official records.
The aim is to ensure the smooth functioning of cross-border cooperation between authorities and other public bodies and to simplify business operations, including through the introduction of a harmonised EU Company Certificate.
This certificate is intended to be a paper-based or digital document confirming the existence of a company and key details such as the position of the managing director, board member and the company’s registered office, valid throughout the EU without the need for additional supporting documents.
Compared with the current requirement to provide apostilled commercial register extracts together with certified translations, as well as apostilles on powers of attorney and other documents when they are to be used in another Member State (for example when changing a managing director, authorised signatory, sole shareholder, company name or share capital), this would be a highly welcome and long-awaited development.
The objective is to ensure that a company duly incorporated under the laws of one Member State does not need to submit any additional documents in another EU Member State and that its existence is recognised automatically.
The first step toward this goal is the introduction of the Company Certificate and enhanced coordination among authorities in the mutual sharing of information. The second step is the planned interconnection of national commercial registers, which should enable the issuance of a certificate of company existence valid throughout the EU.
At the same time, it should be noted that, in current practice, data is not yet automatically transferred between the commercial registers of EU Member States. Although the Business Registers Interconnection System formally exists, it currently serves an informational function only. Public authorities and the public can access foreign register data, but such data is not automatically reflected in the Czech Commercial Register. Any change to registered information therefore still requires an active filing by the company and the submission of supporting documents.
Member States are required to implement the Digitalisation Directive into their national legal systems by mid-2027, with mandatory application from mid-2028. We can therefore only hope that these measures will genuinely lead to simpler, faster and more cost-effective corporate processes.
