A legal person as a member of the governing body of the company in selected legal systems

Abstract

The article discusses the issue of regulations governing the roles of members in the management bodies of companies. The rationale for conducting the research was that European countries have not adopted a uniform model regarding the participation of legal entities in the management bodies of companies. An unsuccessful attempt at such regulation was the Fifth Directive on Companies. The research aimed to compare selected legal systems and emphasize the potential consequences of allowing legal entities to hold positions on the management board, as well as to address the question of whether the standardization of regulations pertaining to this issue is necessary at the European level. This analysis was primarily conducted using the legal dogmatic and comparative legal methods. The research demonstrated that in some legal systems the presence of a legal entity in the management body of a company is widely permissible – for instance, this is allowed by the French, Belgian, and British legislators, although the legislation of these countries is not uniform in this aspect. On the other hand, in Germany and Poland the participation of legal entities as members of the management board is prohibited by the law itself. The author formulates the thesis that there are no specific grounds for harmonizing the described mechanism at the European level. The conclusions drawn can be deemed significant in the context of a potential amendment to the Polish Commercial Companies Code, which could reignite the discussion about the possibility of introducing regulations concerning the capacity of legal entities to hold positions in a company’s management bodies.