Private Law

Based on EC Treaty Art. 95 and 308 the following proposition is made.

Preamble

This draft for the European Foundation is intended to promote foundations in Europe (especially within the European Union). European Foundations shall exemplify generally accepted best practice in their activities and administration, especially in following high standards in matters of accountability and serving the public interest, and could therefore benefit from a favourable tax status, especially for cross-border relationships.

Introduction Civil Law (Hopt/von Hippel/Then)

Preliminaries

The European Foundation – a New European Legal Instrument

All European countries have the legal form of the foundation or a functional equivalent. Although common historical roots exist, foundation law has sometimes developed quite differently. This is true both for the legal framework and for the objective functions of foundations. An example of a very liberal approach can be found in the Netherlands, where since the beginning of the 20th century a foundation has been allowed to pursue any legal purpose, with no minimum initial endowment required, only rudimentary control by the public attorney as the State supervisory authority and with largely unconstrained economic activities. As a consequence, the number of foundations was 140,976 in 2003 and even exceeded the number of incorporated associations (115,150). The counter-example is France, where only 473 recognized public benefit foundations existed in 2003.