EU Moves to Protect Interests Against Predatory China

Less than two years after France, Germany and Italy wrote to the European Commission advocating a new screening mechanism on foreign direct investment, the EU has finalised a scheme that aims to protect European interests.

Unlike America’s Committee on Foreign Investment of the United States (Cfius), an inter-agency committee tasked with reviewing inbound investments for national security concerns, the EU has produced a non-binding screening scheme that will allow a necessary debate in many European countries that, until now, lacked such a process.

It will be a useful tool. The law just approved by the European Parliament will create an alert mechanism for future foreign investments in Europe and a centralised database of current investments while leaving the final decision of approving deals to individual member states.