One Europe, one market - many questions

The conclusions of the European Council of 19 March 2026 on competitiveness reflect a shift in political ambition – and raise questions that will carry significant weight in the legislative process ahead.

The European Council meeting marked a concrete move towards a more operational competitiveness agenda. In an effort to address the real costs of fragmentation for businesses and workers alike within the Single Market, leaders launched a ‘One Europe, One Market’ initiative, to be implemented by 2027 at the latest, aimed at removing barriers, reducing administrative burdens and enabling companies to scale across the EU.

CESI broadly supports the objective of such an initiative – that companies should be able to operate seamlessly across borders, backed by harmonised rules, reduced administrative burdens and stronger enforcement. That support, however, is contingent upon ensuring that efforts to simplify procedures are implemented alongside strong social standards, which are essential for quality job creation, mobility and fair competition.

A central element of the European Council conclusions is the endorsement of a so-called ‘28th regime’ for company law (27 Member States’ regimes plus an EU one). The European Commission’s proposal – presented on Wednesday – would give companies, particularly start-ups and innovative firms, a new optional EU-wide legal framework with digital-by-default procedures and simplified cross-border operations. It seeks to address the tangible costs that companies face when seeking to grow across 27 different national legal frameworks. Read together with the broader labour market and digital economy transformation across the continent, this initiative could also create opportunities for workers.

While welcomed in principle, from a trade union’s perspective, there are, however, serious concerns surrounding the 28th regime. An optional parallel regime sitting alongside national systems creates conditions for regulatory arbitrage and a race to the bottom – with companies gravitating towards whichever framework is most convenient, rather than the one that offers the strongest protections for workers – thereby potentially creating avenues to circumvent working times rules, collective bargaining, minimum wages, worker representation and social protection.

In the frame of the upcoming legislative process it must therefore be ensured that labour standards and worker protections are upheld and explicitly anchored to companies operating under the proposed regime, regardless of where they register. Without such measures, the 28th regime risks becoming not an engine of innovation but a legal architecture for the harmful externalisation of labour costs – underwritten, in the long run, by workers and taxpayers alike.

In sum, the European Council conclusions invoke "highly competitive social market economy" as the overarching goal for this new political agenda. CESI takes that formulation seriously – not as a rhetorical formula but as standard against which the legislative choices ahead should be judged. The work on the 28th regime and the broader simplification agenda is where that principle will either be given substance or quietly set aside. CESI will engage actively in that process to ensure that this agenda delivers for both business and workers across Europe.