About

About the CELIS Institute

The CELIS Institute is an independent non-profit, non-partisan research enterprise dedicated to promoting better regulation of foreign investments in the context of security, public order, and competitiveness. It produces expert analysis and fosters a continuous trusting dialogue between policymakers, the investment community, and academics. The CELIS Institute is the leading forum for studying and debating investment screening policy.

Our activities

The Institute’s activities focus on policy-oriented analysis through its publications and events. The CELIS Institute has a track record of attracting the best and brightest scholars and practitioners to its research activities, who have held or gone on to prominent positions in government, the private sector or academia. As a result, the Institute benefits from a strong network of supporters in all corners of the policymaking, investor and academic communities.

• CELIS Events. The CELIS flagship event is the CELIS Forum on Investment Screening, which serves to enhance the Institute’s analytical capacity and facilitate the shaping of common approaches. A marketplace of ideas, CELIS events bring together EU officials, national experts, diplomats, academics, business leaders, thinktankers, and representatives of civil society and the media from across Europe and beyond. Other high-profile, low-key events include special symposia, seminars, or expert workshops, as well as training in investment compliance and risk control. Participation in CELIS events is by invitation only.

• CELIS Research. In addition to its own research output, such as reports, peer-reviewed articles, and books by CELIS researchers, the CELIS Investment Security Report, CELIS Briefings and video podcasts, the CELIS Institute also welcomes for publications and regularly publishes contributions by other scholars and practitioners interested in the intersection of security and investments, whether from a legal, economic, or policy perspective.

• CELIS Tools. The CELIS Knowledge and Research Hub hosted on the CELIS Institute website celis.institute is the most comprehensive and up to date online tool available for foreign investment screening. Through its network of Country Reporters, the Institute provides full coverage of EU and global screening regimes, including legislation, guidance, court judgments, summaries, academic articles, policy briefs, and is updated up to several times a day. It provides news updates in this rapidly developing area, a target search tool, an FDI screening map, and other resources including podcasts.

• CELIS Network. A key part of the Institute’s mission is to inform and prepare the investment policy experts and policymakers of today and tomorrow. For this purpose, the Institute every year welcomes an international cohort of fellows from a wide range of backgrounds, disciplines, and career stages to exchange ideas with one another and with the broader CELIS community of staff, fellows, affiliates, interns, and alumni. 

Our funding

The Institute is financially independent and receives no general core funding from any government or private source, apart from the individual-bench fees of CELIS Fellows and contributions of CELIS Patrons. Research projects and events are open to funding by a wide variety of bodies including research councils, trusts and foundations, law firms, national governments, the European Commission and Parliament, and non-governmental organisations.

As a research and policy institution committed to the highest standards of organizational, intellectual, and personal integrity, the CELIS Institute maintains strict intellectual independence and sole editorial direction and control over its ideas, projects, publications, events, and other research activities. The Institute does not take institutional positions on policy issues and the content of its publications reflects the views of their authors alone. In keeping with its mission and values, the Institute does not engage in lobbying activity and complies fully with all applicable lobbying laws. The Institute will not engage in any representational activities or advocacy on behalf of any entities or interests and, to the extent that the Institute accepts funding, its activities will be limited to bona fide scholastic, academic, and research-related activities, consistent with applicable law.

Equal opportunities

The CELIS Institute is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive research environment, without discrimination based on race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity, or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, or age. The CELIS Institute is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

About the Institute

The CELIS Institute was set up in 2020 by Professor Steffen Hindelang and Mr. J. Hillebrand Pohl as a permanent successor to the International Conference on a Common European Law on Investment Screening (CELIS), convened by Professor Hindelang and Dr. Andreas Moberg in 2019. A multi-stakeholder initiative, principally funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, CELIS resulted in the very first, interdisciplinary grounded, comprehensive appraisal of EU foreign investment control, published in the inaugural volume of the Yearbook of Socio-Economic Constitutions in 2021 (Springer). The CELIS Institute is headquartered in Berlin.

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