The actual time is not the problem, but the amount of busy work that benefits nobody. When I started my computer shop in Italy many years ago, I ended up needing 12 signatures from different offices, and each one cost me weeks to get. I still remember the first one, I had to prove I had a functioning toilet and the official claimed he had been at the store and found it locked, despite the fact I had been standing at the door the entire day.

Being able to do it quickly is neat. Being able to do it predictably is awesome.

I’m preparing to start a company, and as a single person who needs to quit a job to do this, having to wait for three-ish months starting when I start filing before I can actually do business is extremely annoying. It doesn’t have to be 2 days and 100% online as far as I’m concerned, but several months at full operating expenses just waiting until the last registration is finally confirmed is just not how we get more startups to start in Europe.

That’s not the main feature here though, several countries in the EU already allow faster times to create companies. The novelty here is the EU-wide feature.

In some places it currently takes months, involves sending the same data multiple times (in paper), and go to multiple different places in person. Of course every step also costs money. I definitely know people who would like to start a business but the unnecessary complexity and cost of doing it keeps them. For example in Norway or Estonia you can do it in minutes.

I know more than a few small businesses in Portugal that only got started because the effort to incorporate a company is basically 0 - you don’t even need to have a name, in the faster process you pick a pre-registered name from a list that you think fits your idea.