With the possible enactment of a regulatory framework that would unify the rules for founding and expanding businesses across the European Union (the so-called 28th European Regime or EU Inc), Gonzalo Alonso, CEO of Ditto and former executive at Google and Microsoft, outlines the keys to what could mark a turning point in the European digital ecosystem.
Fragmentation Stifles Growth
For Alonso, Europe faces an unsustainable paradox: it boasts a massive market of more than 450 million consumers, yet in practice operates as 27 fragmented markets. This administrative complexity drags on the growth of the most promising companies. “Big companies can absorb the complexity, but scale-ups expend their energy just surviving it,” the executive notes.
Although Europe surpassed the United States in startup creation per year between 2018 and 2023, the gap in scaling is alarming: by early 2025, the European territory counted barely 110 unicorns versus 687 in the United States. “It’s not a talent problem, but a speed and structure issue. Speed is a competitive advantage, and reducing regulatory friction is equivalent to increasing growth capacity,” Alonso says, drawing on Silicon Valley’s model, whose success lay in allowing companies to scale under a single, coherent set of rules.
The Challenge Isn’t Technology, It’s Culture
EU Inc proposes the possibility of creating companies 100% online in just 48 hours and at a maximum cost of €100. From Ditto’s perspective as a company specialized in transformation and digital identity, the biggest obstacle to achieving this agility lies not in the IT systems, but in the mindset of public administrations.
«For years it was assumed that a process that takes longer is safer; but digitizing bureaucracy is not transformation, it’s bureaucracy with a better interface», warns Alonso. «Speed and security are not enemies. The problem is that we keep designing processes as if they were.»
The executive notes that the banking sector has already demonstrated that it’s possible to move from processes that took weeks to opening accounts in minutes by changing the operating model, using tools that already exist today, such as interoperable digital identity, advanced electronic signatures, and automation.
Against AI-Driven Fraud: Mathematical and Programmable Trust
One of the major fears in Brussels is that the speed of onboarding could facilitate the proliferation of phantom companies or identity fraud, especially in a context where AI-powered attacks, deepfakes, and credential theft are on the rise. Alonso insists that the solution is not to add more paper forms.
«We don’t need slower processes, we need smarter proofs. The trust of the future will be programmable,» explains Ditto’s CEO. The company’s approach shifts trust from physical documents to mathematics through cryptography, using technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs, which allow proving that a user meets a legal requirement without revealing unnecessary private information. «The digital identity of the future doesn’t ask what documents you have, but what you can prove.»
The Four Pillars of the Common Portal and the Zero Trust Model
For the “common direct digital entry point” that the regime envisions to be truly impregnable against cyberattacks, Gonzalo Alonso details the four non-negotiable technical pillars that must be integrated:
- Strong digital identity: based on interoperable standards like eIDAS and verifiable credentials.
- Phishing- and credential theft-resistant authentication.
- Robust cryptographic integrity and signing mechanisms.
- Privacy by design.
Additionally, Alonso calls for a paradigm shift in Europe’s corporate cybersecurity, burying the old perimeter-based protection model. «Passwords were designed for an internet that no longer exists. Modern security is not about guarding doors, but about continuously verifying trust,» he explains while advocating strict adoption of Zero Trust architectures (never assume trust, always verify identity, device, and context).
One of the aspects Ditto values most is the ‘portability’ of corporate credentials across EU countries. By enabling a company to prove who it is and what certificates it holds digitally and automatically, identity becomes a strategic infrastructure.
«When identity is portable, trust is too. We stop moving documents and start moving verifiable credentials,» celebrates Alonso. This advancement will allow companies to operate across multiple countries, access financial services, and hire talent, eliminating duplicative costs and cross-border barriers. «Innovation happens faster when trust travels at the same speed as data».
The Concept of the “Innovative Company”
According to the proposal, this new regulation would apply only to companies considered innovative. For Alonso, there is a risk that the term “innovative company” becomes a hollow bureaucratic label: «a company isn’t innovative because it says it’s changing the world, but because it changes the way the world works».
Finally, Alonso proposes that the EU require the following technical and business criteria to determine whether a company is truly innovative:
- Tangible technological differentiation: Existence of intellectual property, in-house algorithms, real AI capabilities, or patents.
- Demonstrable scalability: Ability to grow significantly in revenue without proportional increases in resources and costs.
- Measurable impact: Solving a market problem in a substantially better way than any current alternative.
