The Commercial and Corporate Law Department of Belzuz Abogados S.L.P. – Sucursal em Portugal reflects on the implementation of the Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS).
Almost six years after the creation of BRIS, through the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2015/884, of 8 June 2015, it is noted that the European space still lacks an effective implementation of measures that would allow an effective interconnection and access to information about companies that appear in business registers in the European Union.
BRIS, which aims to allow cross-border interconnection and access to information about companies that appear in commercial registers in the European Union (“EU”), Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway, has its visible face in the tools of search for information on companies available on the European Justice Portal.
In Portugal, we witnessed the approval of Decree-Law No. 24/2019, of 1 February, which proceeds to the second phase of transposition to the internal legal order of Directive 2012/17/EU, and of Ordinance No. 80/2019, of 18 March.
We notice that corporate entities (companies and permanent representations) are already assigned the unique identifier (“EUID”). Information on Portuguese entities is available on the European Justice Portal. Unfortunately, it is common to find that the same is not the case with entities from other European jurisdictions.
The effort that has been made by the EU to uniformize the various issues of company law has, in essence, proved to be short and ineffective. In fact, the implementation of measures by Member States takes a long time or is still overdue.
BRIS is another example of this. It is symptomatic that, at a time when information on companies is not available in a large part of the Member States, the 2015 Regulation has already been replaced by the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/2244 of 17 December 2020.
The true uniformization of company law has been addressed by the EU, in recent decades, essentially through the approval of Directives aimed at standardising the internal law of Member States. The process has been time-consuming and, to a large extent, ineffective.
Perhaps it is up to the EU legislator and the Member States to change their perspective, with the adoption of new rules through a Regulation. And it is up to the EU to monitor more effectively the transposition and internal application of the measures.
The Commercial and Corporate Law Department of Belzuz Abogados S.L.P. – Sucursal em Portugal has professionals qualified to provide legal advice in clarifying any question relating to companies and in monitoring relevant corporate and contractual procedures.
Commercial and Corporate Law department | (Portugal)
Belzuz Advogados SLP
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