Company Registration: Heard of SOLVIT?

Day 24

Portugal's online company registration platform accepted my login. It started working. Then it stopped, without an error message that explained why, and without any way for me to fix it manually.

The platform is called Empresa Online 2.0. The Portuguese government built it specifically to let entrepreneurs register a Lda (a limited company) without visiting a physical office. For Portuguese citizens it costs between €220 and €360. For me (a Swedish citizen living legally in the Algarve) that path is currently unavailable, which means paying a lawyer to input the same data into the same system for an additional €1,000 to €2,000.

I want to be precise about what the problem actually is, because it's not what you might expect.

It's not the login

The Chave Móvel Digital (CMD) system (Portugal's digital ID) works for EU citizens. When I authenticate with my Swedish eID, the platform recognises me and lets me in. That part works. And I want to acknowledge that it working at all is genuinely impressive: a cross-border eID authentication system, operating between two EU member states, that actually functions. That's not nothing.

The failure happens one step later. Empresa Online 2.0 pulls profile data from government databases to pre-populate registration forms. For Portuguese citizens those databases hold everything the system needs. For non-Portuguese EU citizens those databases are either empty or not integrated with the platform. The forms don't populate. You can't fill them manually, because the system treats the eID data as the only authorised source. There's nothing to click, no override, no fallback.

The platform doesn't tell you this. It accepts your login, starts the flow, and then stalls out silently. If you don't know what you're looking at, you'd assume the platform is broken or that you're doing something wrong.

The same wall, different doorways

While trying to get company registration working, I started noticing a pattern across other government platforms.

Some Portuguese online services work fine with a foreign EU eID. Others route through an authentication URL containing the word "Cidadão" (Citizen) that only resolves correctly for Portuguese citizens. The wall doesn't look the same every time, sometimes it's a silent failure like on Empresa Online 2.0, sometimes it's an explicit error, sometimes it's a form that simply won't advance. The common thread is that the service works for Portuguese citizens and either fails or degrades for other EU citizens who have the same legal right to use it.

The gap isn't the authentication. It's what happens after authentication, the data integrations that government platforms use to pull citizen records, pre-fill forms, and validate submissions. Those integrations were built for the Portuguese citizen database. The rest of us aren't in it, and the platforms weren't designed with a fallback.

What the single market says about this

EU law has a specific position on situations like this.

Freedom of establishment (Article 49 TFEU) gives EU citizens the right to set up a company in any member state on the same terms as nationals. The eIDAS regulation (910/2014/EU) establishes that electronic identification accepted in one member state must be recognised across the EU. The combined effect is that Portugal cannot create barriers that make company registration effectively harder or more expensive for EU citizens than for Portuguese nationals.

The word "effectively" does a lot of work there. Empresa Online 2.0 isn't formally restricted by nationality. There's no sign on the door saying "Portuguese only." But if the self-service path works for Portuguese citizens and fails for other EU citizens due to a data integration gap, and the practical consequence is that the second group pays €1,000 to €2,000 more for a lawyer to input the same data into the same system, that is a de facto cost barrier based on origin.

The fact that it's a technical gap rather than a deliberate policy doesn't change the legal analysis. EU law doesn't have a carve-out for unintentional discrimination.

SOLVIT

Most people have never heard of SOLVIT. I hadn't until I started researching what mechanisms exist for exactly this kind of problem.

SOLVIT is a free network run by the EU for situations where a member state is not correctly applying EU single market rules. You file a complaint through the EU portal, it gets routed to the SOLVIT centre in your home country (for me, Sweden), and they take it up with the SOLVIT centre in the country where the problem occurred (Portugal). The target resolution time is ten weeks.

It's not a court and it's not a formal legal process. It's more like a structured diplomatic channel, the two SOLVIT centres work to find a practical resolution without litigation. About 90% of cases get resolved, according to EU figures.

The categories that qualify include cross-border business registration problems, non-recognition of EU eID, and service access that EU law requires to be available to citizens of all member states. The Empresa Online 2.0 situation fits all three.

Filing is straightforward. You go to ec.europa.eu/solvit, describe the problem, provide evidence that you tried to use the service and what happened, and submit. You don't need a lawyer. The system walks you through it.

Where the case stands

I filed on March 27. Sweden's SOLVIT centre accepted the case on April 7, eleven days later, which is within normal processing range. Portugal's SOLVIT centre responded on April 10 with an initial assessment: they're not yet convinced the problem is systematic rather than a one-off edge case, and they've asked for documentation of prior contact with Portuguese authorities.

That's a reasonable request. I'm gathering the evidence.

The ten-week resolution window runs from acceptance. That puts the target at sometime in mid-June. I'll write a follow-up when there's an outcome to report.

Why this is worth doing

Portugal has built something genuinely impressive. The Portal das Finanças, the e-fatura system, the Chave Móvel Digital, Empresa Online 2.0 itself, this is a country that has invested seriously in digital government infrastructure. A lot of member states are further behind.

The gap between what EU law requires and what Portugal has currently implemented isn't a policy failure. It's a data integration problem that probably wasn't at the top of anyone's priority list when the platform was built, because the people it affects most are a relatively small group of non-Portuguese EU citizens trying to register companies. That group doesn't have a loud voice in domestic policy conversations.

SOLVIT is exactly the mechanism for this. It's designed to surface gaps between what EU law requires and what member states have shipped. A successful case doesn't result in a fine or a judgment against Portugal, it results in the Portuguese authority working with the EU to close the gap. That's the goal.

The best outcome here isn't winning a complaint. It's that the next non-Portuguese EU citizen who logs into Empresa Online 2.0 can actually use it.

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Part of a series on registering a company in Portugal. Post 1 covers what Portugal built, and why it should work. This post is about what happens when it doesn't, and what the EU provides for exactly that.