HOW THE DIGITALISATION HAS CHANGED THE SLOVAK COMPANY LAW

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DIRECTIVE 2019/1151 (DIGITALISATION DIRECTIVE) AND WHAT NEXT?

Abstract

Despite the fact that the use of digital technologies has become an intense global trend in various areas of social life, approaches to the legal regulation of this trend vary across European countries. This paper focuses on how the trend of digital technologies transforms the company law and to what extent it affects or has the potential to affect national legal regulations of Member States. Firstly, the authors assess recent legislative developments in European company law that have shifted towards modernisation of corporate law provisions to make them fit more for the digital era. Therefore, partial harmonisation of corporate law provided by the so-called Digitalisation Directive will be discussed. Furthermore, the paper analyses new Slovak company law provisions on the simplified formation and registration of limited liability companies. As the Slovak legislator has introduced various requirements, which must be met to benefit from the simplified online procedure, the authors assess the efficiency of the new provisions and compare them to the standard rules on setting up a limited liability company. In the second part of the paper, the focus is shifted towards digitalisation in the later stages of a company’s life cycle as well as the virtual registered office as one of the novelties mentioned by the new European initiative “Upgrading Digital Company Law”. Since there is no harmonised regulation at EU level, the defined issues are analysed primarily from the national perspective.