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Österreichische Notariatskammer

ÖNK

The Austrian Chamber of Notaries represents the interests of the Austrian notary profession.

Lobbying Activity

Response to 2026 EU Justice Scoreboard

1 Dec 2025

Please find attached the feedback of the Austrian Chamber of Civil-Law Notaries.
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Meeting with Florian Geyer (Head of Unit Justice and Consumers)

19 Nov 2025 · Role of notaries for the rule of law

Austrian notaries urge legal certainty in digital simplification

14 Oct 2025
Topic — The Commission seeks to simplify digital regulations and reduce burdens on businesses.
Message — The chamber demands that digital reforms respect national legal frameworks and formal requirements. They emphasize that data sharing must involve competent authorities to ensure accuracy and trust. Finally, they request better integration into the digital transformation to maintain legal standards.123
Why — This would protect the notaries' essential role in validating public register data.4
Impact — Open data proponents lose if stricter safeguards limit the automated reuse of information.5
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Response to European Innovation Act

3 Oct 2025

Please find attached the contribution by the Austrian Chamber of Civil-Law Notaries.
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Meeting with Evelyn Regner (Member of the European Parliament) and EUROPEAN TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION and

25 Sept 2025 · Debate 28th Regime

Meeting with René Repasi (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur) and Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund and

25 Sept 2025 · Lunch Debate '28. Regime'

Meeting with Lukas Mandl (Member of the European Parliament)

19 Sept 2025 · 28th Regime: a new legal framework for innovative companies

Response to European Judicial Training Strategy 2025 - 2030

9 Sept 2025

The Austrian Chamber of Civil-Law Notaries welcomes the European Commissions initiative to further strengthen judicial training as a fundamental pillar of an effective and resilient justice system and the respective acknowledgement that this is important factor for attracting investments and the competitiveness of the European Union. To deploy digital tools in an efficient and secure way, all parties involved must be well-trained and informed. Hence, we would like to respond to the European Commission's call for comments on the proposed European Judicial Training Strategy 2025-2030 in the file attached, based on our practical experience and long-standing commitment to digital transformation and high-quality legal services.
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Meeting with Lukas Mandl (Member of the European Parliament)

29 Aug 2025 · 28th Regime: a new legal framework for innovative companies

Meeting with Lukas Mandl (Member of the European Parliament)

13 Aug 2025 · 28th Regime: a new legal framework for innovative companies

Meeting with Lukas Mandl (Member of the European Parliament)

16 Jul 2025 · 28th Regime: a new legal framework for innovative companies

Meeting with Evelyn Regner (Member of the European Parliament)

15 Jul 2025 · General Exchange of Views

Response to Digital Justice Strategy 2025 - 2030

23 Jun 2025

The Austrian Chamber of Civil-Law Notaries welcomes the Commission's initiative to further improve quality and efficiency of the justice system and foster digitalisation in this field. This is of particular importance with regard to developing relief strategies to mitigate the current work load and lack of resources in justice systems, where Austrian notaries are taking an active role to contribute to good and workable solutions. The Austrian notaries stand side-by-side with citizens and businesses, as public office holders being part of the justice system, and have from early on been actively investing in digitalisation to foster efficiency and simplification, while securing legal certainty. In the file attached, the Austrian Chamber of Civil-Law Notaries would like to feedback on the specific points mentioned in the call for evidence.
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Response to Digital services for simplifying business operations and reducing administrative costs – the business wallet

11 Jun 2025

Austrian notaries stand side-by-side with businesses and have from early on been actively promoting digitalisation efforts to foster efficiency and simplification, while securing legal certainty. In particular, with regard to their competencies in company law, Austrian notaries are an important partner for businesses and public authorities alike. With most of its services being also offered digitally, the Austrian notaries provide an important contribution to reducing bureaucracy and simplifying legal transactions. In this vein, they welcome the Commissions proposal, acknowledging the practical relevance and benefits it can bring for businesses and highlighting the role of notaries to support this progress.
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Response to EU Start-up and Scale-up Strategy

17 Mar 2025

The notarial profession is standing side by side with SMEs and startups. By involving notaries, the objectives of significantly reducing bureaucratic burdens and cutting red tape for startups in the EU can be fulfilled. This, because in Member States such as Austria, notaries support citizens and businesses in time-consuming communication with the authorities, for example with regard to registers. As a one-stop shop, notaries contribute to simplifying and reducing bureaucracy in administrative processes. In this role, notaries frequently act as one-stop for companies throughout their lifecycle. In recent years, e.g. Austria has heavily invested in digitalisation and streamlining of procedures. Today all notarial services are available online. As an example, notaries can set up online a limited liability company within 24 hours and carry out the steps from identity check, advice, drafting of the articles of association and payment of the share capital to direct and digital submission of the documents to the commercial register. This allows founders from different countries in the EU and around the world to remotely establish a company in Austria without the need for time-consuming travel. Key success factors for this achievement are the notarys strong advisory role, the representation of companies vis-à-vis authorities, the highest level of fast digital procedures and legal certainty thanks to the use of authentic instruments which provides assurance for investors on the legal robustness and reliability of their transactions. In an increasingly unstable world, businesses and investors can trust in a predictable and robust, litigation-avoiding legal framework which is a decisive locational factor for the European Union. The EU single market needs to develop instruments for legal certainty in order to attract (also foreign) investments and make them reliable for all involved parties. The Eu has already taken steps into that direction, e.g. when it comes to business registers, the close cooperation and interlink between notaries and the judiciary for ex-ante checks when entering data in business registers. This is of fundamental importance to ensure the exchange and recognition of reliable registers data throughout the EU. This role of notaries for the public preventive control has been emphasized very recently under the Directive (EU) 2025/25 on further expanding and upgrading the use of digital tools and processes in company law. Through the quality-ensuring support of notaries, a significant unburdening of the judiciary is achieved; Through their quality-ensuring work, notaries contribute significantly to relieving the judiciary by supporting legal accuracy and prevention of disputes while also playing a crucial role in preventing abuse. Against this background, we are convinced that the incorporation process is already working smoothly and efficiently and the challenges for startups are more critical in the area of financing and administrating the scaleup. We therefore agree that one of the biggest challenges for startups and scaleups is the limited access to finance in the EU. Therefore, the EU strategy should focus on addressing these hurdles. However, the process of starting a business is no longer a major obstacle today, as it can be generally done quickly, without bureaucratic barriers (through one-stop-shop solutions), and fully digitally. For this reason, the focus should be put on other key aspects. As the EU shapes its future policies, it is crucial that the European Commission should consider the notarial profession as a decisive part of its solutionswhether in developing the 28th regime or implementing broader measures to cut red tape. By integrating notaries into these reforms, the EU can ensure that startups and scaleups benefit from an efficient, secure, and competitive business environment combined with the highest quality advice and use of modern digital tools.
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Meeting with Florian Geyer (Head of Unit Justice and Consumers)

12 Feb 2025 · Role of notaries for the rule of law

Austrian Notaries Advocate Digital One-Stop Shops for Legal Certainty

28 Jan 2025
Topic — The strategy focuses on developing a single market for cross-border services and goods.
Message — Notaries should serve as one-stop shops to simplify administrative processes and reduce bureaucracy. They advocate for legal certainty through digital procedures and checks before data enters business registers.12
Why — This reinforces the role of notaries as essential intermediaries in digital commerce.3
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Meeting with Emil Radev (Member of the European Parliament)

12 Dec 2024 · 28th regime in Draghi report

Response to 2025 EU Justice Scoreboard

5 Dec 2024

On the basis of the successful integration of succession procedures into the Scoreboard, it is important that the 2025 EU Justice Scoreboard continues to evolve and reflects additional non-contentious civil justice procedures. By continuing the integration of non-contentious civil justice procedures and thereby amplifying their reflection in the next issues of the EU Justice Scoreboard, based on the example of succession procedures, the European Commission could as a next step, for the 2025 issue of the Scoreboard, reflect consensual (non-contentious) divorce procedures and competent authorities in charge of these procedures in the Member States. The integration of such procedures into the Scoreboard has the potential to exchange Member States' best practices in framing non-contentious procedures. This should contribute to making justice systems even more effective by learning from each other. It would ideally result in accelerated procedures in moderned systems by optimising availble (scarce) resources as well as useful sharing of workload among different institutions in the field of family law, including the perspective of investments in digital procedural workflow and interconnection. This initiative should take into account the growing trend in Member States of outsourcing such procedures to independant and impartial public office holders, such as notaries.
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Meeting with Lukas Mandl (Member of the European Parliament)

22 Oct 2024 · Entrepreneurship, rule of law and easing the burden on the justice system

Meeting with Elisabeth Grossmann (Member of the European Parliament)

22 Oct 2024 · informal exchange

Meeting with Andreas Schieder (Member of the European Parliament)

22 Oct 2024 · Exchange of views

Response to Taking stock of the Judicial Training Strategy 2021-2024

30 Apr 2024

The participation in the EL@N 2020-22 project of the Council of Notariats of the European Union (CNUE) was successful and improved the understanding and consistent application of EU law (in particular EU company law) among notaries and judges. In future EU funding programmes for training, greater consideration should be given to non-contentious proceedings in civil matters. This is also in order to explicitly take into account a current trend towards the modernisation of these procedures at the level of EU Member States and the European Union.
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Meeting with Evelyn Regner (Member of the European Parliament)

18 Mar 2024 · General Exchange of Views

Meeting with Evelyn Regner (Member of the European Parliament)

14 Nov 2023 · General Exchange of Views

Meeting with Emil Radev (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

6 Jun 2023 · digitalisation of judicial cooperation

Meeting with Isabel Benjumea Benjumea (Member of the European Parliament)

23 Feb 2023 · AMLA

Response to 2023 EU Justice Scoreboard

15 Dec 2022

Non-contentious judicial procedures, such as in the area of succession or family law, should be better taken into account by the EU Justice Scoreboard. In a number of Member States such non-contentious court procedures are done by notaries, aiming at unburdening courts, thus contributing to improve the efficiency of the justice systems of these Member States. In that context, notaries exercise court functions, in particular in succession procedures, but also in other fields of civil justice (e.g. family law, order of payment) frequently acting as court commissioners or equivalent to courts. In that context, the project Justice Without Litigation www.juwili.eu has analysed these functions and developed a proposal for possible indicators which could be integrated into the Scoreboard as shown here in the attached file.
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Response to 2021 EU Justice Scoreboard

7 Apr 2021

Today data on non-contentious judicial procedures are lacking in the European Justice Scoreboard which results in an incomplete picture of the efficiency of judicial systems in the EU. To fill this gap, the European Justice Scoreboard should be expanded to include a special chapter on non-contentious judicial procedures in the Member States. The need for inclusion of non-contentious judicial procedures becomes even more important against the background of the evolution of EU civil justice instruments which cover to an even larger extend non-contentious judicial procedures such as in succession law, family law, uncontested claims and possibly in the future on protection of vulnerable adults. The integration of non-contentious judicial procedures in the Scoreboard should take into account all actors falling under the definition of “court” under the EU civil justice instruments dealing with such matters.
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Response to 2018 EU Justice Scoreboard

4 Apr 2018

To ensure a complete picture of the justice system it would be essential to include the administration of justice for preventive purposes in the judicial scoreboard. The role of Latin Notaries as well as lawyers who operate in Civil law countries as State appointed agents with power to govern ex-ante contract formation in between private as well as commercial economic agents shall thereby be analyzed. As a result, the justice scoreboard will deliver a more comprehensive comparison of legal systems. For the sake of concreteness, possible indicators to be considered are, inter alia, densities of ex-ante legal advice (on a per capita basis), expressed in heads or hours per 1,000 inhabitants, expenditures per capita on ex-ante legal advice, the number of rejections by commercial registers (e.g. due to an erroneous or misleading company name) per 1,000 transactions, the number and/or the volume of claims against the (mandatory) liability insurance of legal service providers and/or the corresponding actual settlements, to name just few. The justice scoreboard can demonstrate first how legal costs, both private and public, vary among different Member States, can second emphasize how much of the economic resources spent on legal matters in an economy is influenced by the underlying legal system and third make the interdependencies of a system of administration of justice for preventative purposes in place and the effects on the justice system explicit.
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Meeting with Paraskevi Michou (Acting Director-General Justice and Consumers)

26 Jan 2015 · Public documents and Shareholders rights