If the "state" encourages entrepreneurship by making it easy and free to set up a company at a VEM point, it should also make it easy and free to "wind up" a company that has settled its liabilities and settled its relations with business partners and employees. It could do this by (as it did in simplifying the establishment of limited liability companies) prescribing:
- a uniform form of the decision on the summary dissolution of an LLC,
- a uniform form of declaration by the members that all the liabilities of the LLC have been paid, that all relations with the employees have been settled and that they assume the obligation to pay any remaining liabilities of the company,
- the competence of the VEM points to authenticate the declarations of the members and to file, on behalf of the members, a petition for the striking-off of the company dissolved under the abridged procedure from the court register.
Summary winding-up is an institution which allows the company to be removed from the register without a liquidation procedure having been carried out, without prejudice to the interests of creditors, and the liquidation procedure is replaced by a declaration by all the members that they will personally settle the company's liabilities to creditors if they arise after the company has been removed from the register. The prerequisites for winding up a company under these procedures are that the company has no creditors or unresolved legal relations with business partners or employees. A limited liability company shall be dissolved under the abbreviated procedure without liquidation if all the members propose to the registration authority that the company be removed from the register without liquidation and attach to the proposal a decision on dissolution under the abbreviated procedure and a notarised declaration by all the members that all the company's liabilities have been paid, that all relations with employees have been settled and that they assume the obligation to pay any remaining liabilities of the company. A visit to the notary is compulsory, and with it the expenses incurred, which I estimate at around €130 for a one-person company (notarial tariffs are complex, so I cannot say for sure that the figure quoted is correct). I believe that many shareholders who no longer wish to "own" a company, but whose company meets the above assumptions, do not have the company removed from the court register (partly due to ignorance, and partly due to the payment of notarial services, which are not available in the case of removal from the court register without liquidation under the provisions of the ZFPPIPP), but wait for someone else to take care of the removal.