In the eyes of the Commission, the European Company Statute (ECS) “will mean in practice, that companies established in more than one Member State will be able to merge and operate throughout the EU on the basis of a single set of rules and a unified management and reporting system. They will therefore avoid the need to set up a financially costly and administratively time-consuming complex network of subsidiaries governed by different national laws. In particular, there will be advantages in terms of significant reductions in administrative and legal costs, a single legal structure and unified management and reporting systems.” The Ciampi report estimates that savings in terms of administrative costs may be up to €30 billion per year.

Moreover, this new business form may have a value in publicity terms, as it indicates that this company is a “real European undertaking” thereby possibly removing e.g. psychological barriers.

However, this optimistic view is not shared by everyone. Indeed, the attractiveness of the ECS might be reduced because it de facto does not provide for one uniform European corporate form. In all matters that are not regulated by the Regulation, the SE will be governed by the company law provisions of the member state in which the SE is registered. Consequently, there will not be a single SE law but 30 SE laws which may diverge significantly from each other