The 28th Regime: An Effective Legal Architecture for Innovation in Europe?

A growing consensus has emerged in academic and policy circles that regulating corporations, financial institutions, and markets ideally postulates a genuinely interdisciplinary approach. The DFG LawFin Center supports the quest for interdisciplinarity by organizing events that can serve as a forum for discussions regarding topical themes. 

The 7th LawFin Workshop—the third in the series jointly organised with the Department of Legal Studies at Bocconi University and under the sponsorship of ECGI—will focus on:

“The 28th Regime: 
An Effective Legal Architecture for Innovation in Europe?”

On 18 March 2026, the European Commission unveiled its proposal for the “28th regime.” This event focuses on the design of the 28th regime to examine what the initiative is meant to achieve and what trade-offs may be embedded in that effort. The goal is to move beyond generic claims about simplification, innovation, and competitiveness and to offer a more granular account of the potential and limitations of the regime resulting from the proposal. 

The discussion will focus on the broader architecture of the regime, its relationship with national corporate laws and its implications for Europe’s approach to company law. At the same time, it will pay special attention to what the initiative may mean for innovation policy, particularly as regards the extent to which the emerging regime aims to (and is capable of) accommodating the special needs of innovation-driving VC-backed firms.

The programme will combine academic analysis with a policymaker-facing discussion. Four research papers will be presented and discussed, followed by a roundtable with representatives from academia, the financial industry, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the legal profession, and the policy world. The session will run for approximately five and a half hours.

This workshop is part of a global seminar series on the law and finance of private equity and VC. Past events in the series include the workshops on “Building Europe’s Venture Capital Market: Contractual Transplants, National Challenges, and the Road to a Pan-E.U. Regime” (held on 4 December 2025) and “U.S. Venture Capital Contracting Goes Global: Perspectives from Asia and Latin America” (held on 18 March 2026). Subsequent events will focus on, inter alia, “Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds across the Globe” and “Legal Culture and Private Ordering: What Can VC Contracting Teach Us?”.

📆 Conference details: 
Lecture date and time: Thursday, 7 May 2026 | 13:00 – 18:30 CEST
 

📍Conference location: Zoom