This paper highlights the gap between the opportunities for EU-companies to fully exploit
their freedom of establishment on the one hand and the obstacles flowing from the mainly national
organisation of information filing requirements through business registers on the other hand. From
the point of view of companies, this gap partly neutralises the efforts replayed both in EU regulation
and ECJ jurisprudence to guarantee the freedom of establishment. Companies are not only often
obliged to file the same information in different countries but, due to the lack of information sharing
between the countries in which they are established, investors, creditors and other stakeholders may
suffer information asymmetries. We analyse the possible legal approaches towards organising the
filing of information in a network model. The design of a technical solution to improve the crossborder
sharing of corporate data in order to decrease administrative burdens on the freedom lies at
the heart of the BRITE project. BRITE wishes to increase the interoperability of business registers,
not only with a view to facilitating the cross-border establishment of companies, but also as a tool
for other users (including public authorities) who can benefit from the better dissemination of public
company data and the possibility to aggregate data at a European level. We submit that the European
lawmakers have not yet fully exploited the possibilities offered by linking national public
information systems into networks, although the Transparency Directive does envisage a network
approach as regards the dissemination of company and financial information by listed companies.