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Comment by tommica | Hacker News Reader

They should make it easier to run own businesses in Europe, lessen then amount of paperwork and red tape. It's impossible to start a tech business under the amount of bureaucracy they throw at you.

I'd love to give it a go, but to get even started I have to pay accountants, banks, lawyers, pre-taxes, etc before I even have made a single cent.

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Draghi report made it abundantly clear that this is the big issue. Despite being outwardly unified, EU market is horribly fractured, with regulations building on top of EU standards in almost every state and every area of business.

Then there are high energy costs, high salary costs, limited mobility of the workforce (partly due to ongoing housing crisis), entrenched overseas competition that doesn't have to deal with same challenges.

Together, these add to a deadly mix. Paradoxically, software is less affected than other industries. But even here it's bad.

> They should make it easier to run own businesses in Europe, lessen then amount of paperwork and red tape.

These are not the main obstacles. US monopolies are. See this article: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/

Is it? If you're not interested in limited liability it's 85 euros to file for a company. If you do want limited liability, you have to visit a notary to found, but even that's only like 500 euros. Sure, you have to do your taxes every year and that's annoying, but it's not _that_ hard.

> you have to visit a notary to found

Why is that even necessary in the first place? Thats what people hate about bureaucracy. Why can't we just submit a form somewhere from home and someone looks over it from a queue. In the meantime you are allowed to start your business already. Bad process here. No process is 100% times better. An async one with forgiveness is getting you 80% there.

What kind of business would you like to run that it needs to be established today and cannot wait a few weeks? There are many repercussions, social security and tax wise. Do you expect a government to keep up with a free-for-all form that creates companies ?

What's stopping you from just running your business while waiting before the notary has time for you?

It's ultimately the same thing; if in your async queue system your application was denied you'd still be liable.

These are fair points but the weight of their impact is a misconception. Times and times again, lower capital and investment risk aversion are shown to be the limiting factors.

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