Interconnection of business registers

Business registers of various sorts are of great importance - the Register of Companies being the obvious example in the UK and in fact the only one since the Register of Business Names disappeared in Mrs Thatcher's first cull of what were deemed to be unnecessary impediments on the ability to do business, notwithstanding that it performed a valuable consumer protection function, sorely missed in a world in which you can rarely tell with whom you are doing business on-line. Within the European Union, with more and more trans-border business going on, co-ordinating business registries is a pretty important thing to do (and I hope it might show how woeful is the UK system). Whether as the Commission claims

Linking business registers across Europe will stimulate cross-border trade and save up to 70 million euro a year

I don't know, and it certainly sounds optimistic, but that does not mean it isn't worth doing.

Directive 2012/17/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2012 is the instrument to do the job, amending Council Directive 89/666/EEC and Directives 2005/56/EC and 2009/101/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council. The Commission's press release is here.