A couple of days ago, Handakte WebLAWg linked to 123recht on the topic of the legal situation when Germans found companies abroad. 123recht presents an article by Völker Römermann on the subject.

Germans have been founding limited companies in England and Wales / the UK for some time now. For one thing, you don’t have to deposit 25,000 euros. As I recall from doing a few translations in this area, the German courts were always looking for moral reasons to find against these companies. They weren’t reallay recognized in Germany if that was not their main place of business. The Austrian courts seemed to make more sense. So it was left to the European Court of Justice last September to hold that companies validly founded in one state of the EU must be recognised without restriction in every other state of the EU. (in C 167/01 English not available in German?)

bq. Das Gericht hat entschieden, dass in einem Staat der Europäischen Union wirksam gegründete Gesellschaften in jedem anderen Staat uneingeschränkt anerkannt werden müssen. Bezogen auf Deutschland bedeutet das, dass hierzulande neben den “klassischen” deutschen Gesellschaftsformen, wie z.B. der GmbH oder der AG, auch ausländische Rechtsformen, wie z.B. die englische Limited, am Rechtsverkehr teilnehmen können.

The case isn’t new, but the article is.