Germany, France and Spain are some of the biggest offenders here.

Some years ago a case became quite famous in Spain. Someone wanted to turn a winery into a eco-tourism boutique hotel with a winery tour and experience. Should be simple in theory, in practice they were waiting for authorization to open for more than 4 years.

I’ve been involved with startups and small businesses for more than a decade, and I haven’t still heard of any of them doing things 100% by the book, because it’s just impossible.

People just start and hope the taxman doesn’t come.

I've also done it both in Sweden and the Netherlands. Sweden is a breeze if you have BankID, sure (and as you said, if the bank likes you). The Netherlands wasn't exactly a breeze — I had to book a face-to-face appointment with KVK and all the slots in Amsterdam were taken, so I took the train about an hour away.

That is refreshing to hear. Unfortunately I can't get out because of exit tax, an unrealized capital gains tax for the privilege of leaving the country. That is way worse than what I mention in this post and will get its own post soon.

Same in Poland. Almost 100% things regarding companies or personal things you can do online. Self employment company can be set even via bank app. Ltd a bit longer online (unless you need a custom ltd agreement).

In the UK it used to be one form and a fee of £25 or something like that. I think, nowadays, that's probably just done online as well.

> Although Sweden is a bit strange in the fact that banks have as much equal say as the government authority does in you starting a company, and if they don't want you as a customer, they can simply deny the right for your company to start!

Wait, how does that work? Are you saying that if the bank doesn't like me, instead of just denying me a loan, they can convince other banks not to loan to me as well?

In Germany it might be easier to open a company remotely via Estonia

Once had a call with a Netherlands founder (i am european too), and told me "Declare your company in Delaware, everything will be much easier"

I paid someone 100 euros for a title, i said hi, and I send quarterly 0 euro issues. That's all the effort I need to do in The Netherlands

Yeah it’s also very easy to do in the UK.

Getting a little bit more annoying year-on-year for maintenance with stuff like identity checks and software requirements for eg tax information, but still trivial to initially create

To be fair, it's also much easier to start a company in Germany if you choose a simpler legal form. It's probably still easier in the Netherlands or Sweden, but the authors pain is at least partially self-inflicted.

Legally, the banks in Sweden have no right to deny anybody as a customer. This is explicit in the law as a requirement for the bank to be covered by government depositors insurance.

In practice banks will deny anybody to open an account, for no reason at all, because they are above the law in Sweden. The country has for a long time been owned by a few powerful banker families.

Edit: Down voters might first want to look at Wikipedia for the Wallenberg family. This is as much part of Swedish culture as IKEA or meatballs.

I challenge anybody to find a country in modern history which is more owned and controlled by bankers than Sweden.

Same in Belgium. Easy peasy. Took no time at all.

>Before Europe gets lumped in as one country

The classic European trick: it's one strong union when you want to use counting stats or independence from America , but you can't lump in the duchy 3km away as the same when you want to pick and choose the metrics that make you look good.