How can I pass the FormGroup of a parent component to its child component using the current Form API

In the parent component do this:

<div [formGroup]="form">
  <div>Your parent controls here</div>
  <your-child-component [formGroup]="form"></your-child-component>
</div>

And then in your child component you can get hold of that reference like so:

export class YourChildComponent implements OnInit {
  public form: FormGroup;

  // Let Angular inject the control container
  constructor(private controlContainer: ControlContainer) { }

  ngOnInit() {
    // Set our form property to the parent control
    // (i.e. FormGroup) that was passed to us, so that our
    // view can data bind to it
    this.form = <FormGroup>this.controlContainer.control;
  }
}

You can even ensure either formGroupName or [formGroup] is specified on your component by changing its selector like so:

selector: '[formGroup] epimss-error-messages,[formGroupName] epimss-error-messages'

This answer should be sufficient for your needs, but if you want to know more I’ve written a blog entry here:

Angular – How to create composite controls that work with formGroup/formGroupName and ReactiveForms