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What this is

Own the Machine is an open-source draft EU Regulation, prepared as the basis for a possible European Citizens' Initiative. It would require companies whose market value is at least eighty times their annual payroll, the signature of production decoupled from labour, to issue, once, non-voting shares worth 3 % of their capital to a European Citizens' Capital Reserve owned equally by every adult EU citizen. Nothing is payable in cash, nothing passes through any public budget, and the obligation falls due only when a company's own owners cash out.

Boilerplate, free to reuse

Own the Machine is a citizens' draft EU Regulation that would give every EU adult an equal stake in the companies whose value comes from machines rather than people. Drafted in the open and adversarially reviewed, with every objection and every review verdict published, it is prepared as the basis for a possible European Citizens' Initiative. It is not endorsed by any EU institution. The full text, in five languages, is at ownthemachine.eu.

The numbers that matter

Designation test: fair market value at least eighty times annual audited payroll, plus EUR 75 billion of value or EUR 7,5 billion of EU turnover, in at least three Member States, for two consecutive years.
Presumptively designated on August 2026 figures: roughly nine companies worldwide, about EUR 20 trillion of combined value, spanning the United States, Taiwan and, near the threshold, the EU itself.
The claim: 3 % per company, once, as non-voting shares, at the moment of a listing, sale or equivalent cash-out.
The objective, written into the law: a stake per citizen of the order of six months of median EU disposable income within a generation. 3 % is the smallest whole percentage that reaches it on the published model.
Distributions start near zero by design and grow over decades; the fund's capital is preserved by law before anything is paid.

Every figure above traces to a sourced, reproducible note in the public evidence base, and the model behind the projections runs live on the site's simulator.

Status, plainly

A draft. Nothing has been filed with the European Commission, nothing is registered, no signature is being collected anywhere. A registrability enquiry is pending with the European Citizens' Initiative Forum. An initiative would legally require a group of at least seven organisers resident in seven Member States; that group does not yet exist. The project publishes its gates and kill criteria and stops publicly if they fail.

What this is not

Not an EU document, and not endorsed, reviewed or published by any EU institution.
Not a tax, a levy or a budget instrument: no cash, no treasury, no public spending.
Not universal basic income: it builds property, and payments are the income that property earns.
Not a fund with votes: the Reserve can never vote, take board seats or direct any company.
Not a promise of quick money: payouts start near zero and take a generation to become meaningful, and the site says so on every page where it matters.

Attributable statement

From David Vanheeswijck, initiator: "If automation really does take over most work, Europeans should own a share of what replaces them, and if it does not, this law is written to stand down. Either way the text is public, every attack on it is published, and anyone who finds the hole we missed improves the law by saying so."

Assets and contact

Social preview images for every page, in five languages, are served under ownthemachine.eu/og/ and may be reused in reporting.
The full draft is downloadable as PDF and EPUB from the law page, pinned to a version identifier.
All text is CC BY-SA 4.0; the site and tools are open source.
Contact: hello@ownthemachine.eu. One person answers it; there is no press office yet, and same-day answers are realistic.