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Eastern European company registries: where the ownership data actually is
Central and Eastern Europe runs some of the most usable company registers in the EU — and the depth varies more than most people expect. Estonia publishes contacts and ownership openly; Poland's KRS carries board composition and share capital; Slovakia and Slovenia cover identity and activity. This guide maps what each register gives you and how to combine them for cross-border KYB.
Three identifiers, one company
The first surprise for anyone integrating Eastern European data is that a single company carries several identifiers, each for a different administrative system. Poland is the clearest case:
| Identifier | Purpose |
|---|---|
| KRS | National Court Register — the company register entry |
| NIP | Tax identification |
| REGON | Statistical register |
Czechia has the same pattern (IČO for identity, DIČ for VAT), and so do most of the region's registers. A KYB workflow usually needs more than one, because the counterparty's invoice carries the tax number while the register keys on the court number.
Estonia: the reference implementation
Estonia's business register is the one other countries get compared to. It publishes identity, status, legal form, contact details and ownership as open data under a CC-BY licence, and because Estonian administration is digital-first, the register is unusually current.
For lead generation the significant part is contact coverage — Estonian company records routinely carry an email address, which is rare in EU registers and normally the missing field that forces buyers to a commercial database.
Estonia business register data →
Poland: KRS, board composition and capital
Poland's National Court Register publishes more corporate structure than most: legal form, registration date, registered address, share capital and board members with their roles. For due diligence on a Polish counterparty that combination answers the two questions that matter — who controls this entity, and how much capital stands behind it.
Slovakia and Slovenia: identity and activity
Slovakia's RPO (Register of Legal Entities) and Slovenia's AJPES business register are leaner but authoritative: entity identity, legal form, status, registered address and activity classification. Slovakia publishes SK NACE — the national variant of the EU classification, with extra granularity at the lower levels but aligned at the top.
Slovakia RPO data → · Slovenia AJPES data →
Neighbours worth knowing
- Czechia (ARES) — 3M+ companies with IČO, VAT, NACE, address, directors and share capital. One of the largest open registers in the region.
- Latvia — identity plus officers, shareholders, beneficial owners and annual-report financials. The deepest ownership data of the group.
- Ukraine (ProZorro) — not a company register but a procurement system, and an unusually transparent one: buyer contact details are published with each tender.
Beneficial ownership: the moving target
EU anti-money-laundering directives required member states to maintain beneficial-ownership registers, and for a period many were openly accessible. A 2022 Court of Justice of the European Union ruling changed that by invalidating unrestricted public access, and member states responded differently — some restricted access to those demonstrating a legitimate interest, others kept broader access for particular data.
The practical consequence for anyone building KYB pipelines: do not assume UBO data is uniformly available across the EU. Latvia publishes it; several neighbours do not. Design the workflow so a missing UBO is an expected state that routes to manual review, rather than a pipeline failure.
Cross-border segmentation with NACE
The reason these registers combine well is NACE. Because Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Nordics all classify activity with the same taxonomy, a sector list built in one country transfers directly to another. That is the single most useful property of European registry data and it has no equivalent in the US, where industry classification is patchier and no national register exists at all — see US state business registries for that contrast.
VAT number and registration number are not the same thing
Almost every Central and Eastern European jurisdiction issues a business two numbers, and conflating them is the most common integration bug in the region:
- A registration number, assigned when the entity is incorporated. Every registered company has one.
- A VAT number, assigned when the business registers for VAT. Only VAT-registered businesses have one — and plenty of small companies legitimately do not.
They are frequently related (in several countries the VAT number is the country prefix plus the registration number) which is exactly what makes the confusion so easy and so damaging. Build on the registration number as your key, because it exists for every company. Treat the VAT number as an attribute — one that is, usefully, cross-checkable at EU level: the EU's VAT validation service confirms whether a given VAT number is currently valid in its member state, which is a second, independent confirmation that a counterparty is trading.
That combination — national register for identity and status, EU VAT validation for current activity — is a stronger verification than either alone, and both are free.
One taxonomy, twenty-seven markets
The reason CEE registers reward regional work is NACE. Every EU member state classifies business activity on the same system, so a sector definition built once applies everywhere. A filter for software publishing returns comparable populations in Czechia, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia without a single translation.
The same principle runs through French NAF codes and through CPV codes in EU procurement. Shared taxonomies are what turn a collection of national datasets into one addressable European market — and they are the single highest-leverage thing to build your logic on, because they survive every border you cross.
Frequently asked questions
Which European register is the most open?
Estonia, usually — open licence, contact details and ownership, and a digital-first administration keeping it current. Latvia is comparable and goes deeper on beneficial owners and financials.
What is KRS?
Poland's National Court Register number. Polish companies also carry NIP (tax) and REGON (statistics); a KYB workflow typically needs more than one.
Do these registers publish beneficial owners?
Some do. Access rules diverged after the 2022 CJEU ruling, so treat UBO availability as country-specific.
Are NACE codes comparable across countries?
Yes — that is their purpose. National variants add digits at the lower levels but align at the top, which makes cross-border industry segmentation reliable.