CELIS Blog

By Conor Hand, Deputy Director Investment Screening Unit at the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment (Ireland)    Introduction In an increasingly interconnected world, the national and global security environment is becoming more contested and complex. Reflecting this changing environment, and the increasing diversification of threats, the Irish Government has passed a key piece of legislation designed to protect security ...

By Pouya Ghotbi, Wistrand Advokatbyrå    Background In 1916, the Swedish government introduced a piece of legislation restricting the right of foreigners to invest in Sweden. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the legislation was further tightened, making it difficult for foreigners to acquire businesses in Sweden without government scrutiny. The Act was abolished 1991, embarking on an open economy ...

Ireland – Introduction of a new FDI screening regime on 31 October 2023 On 31 October 2023, the Screening of Third Country Transactions Act 2023 was signed into law. Since the initial draft was published on 2 August 2022, the Act has undergone a series of amendments during the course of 2023,. Therewith, for the first time, there is a ...

By Jonas Fechter, University of Münster / CELIS Deputy Assistant Director    I. Introduction Investment screening is infamous for the low number of judicial proceedings that have challenged the legality of the prohibition and mitigation measures imposed by governments. As a result, there is, as yet, no strong body of case law clarifying how investment screening laws are to be applied, ...

By Mark Konstantinidis, King’s College London    Introduction and background  In September 2023, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her State of the Union address to the European Parliament. President von der Leyen warned that ‘global markets are now flooded with cheaper Chinese electric cars. And their price is kept artificially low by huge state subsidies. This is ...

By Dr. Iryna Bogdanova, World Trade Institute   China’s growing assertiveness in the use of economic sanctions: where are we heading? The US-China trade war, tightening of US export controls, and economic sanctions against Chinese technology companies instigated major revisions of Chinese laws and regulations that emulate Western tools used to implement economic sanctions. These recent amendments represent a major ...

By Prof. Dr Bimal N. Patel, Member, National Security Advisory Board, India; Vice-Chancellor, Rashtriya Raksha University; Member, UN International Law Commission (The views are personal) Strategies and balancing of priorities in economic security No nation can proliferate without foreign direct investment. Even so, in certain sectors, such as military or network technologies, FDI may raise national security concerns. In the face ...

By Leonard von Rummel, BLOMSTEIN and Ass.-Prof. Dr. Lena Hornkohl, University of Vienna / CELIS Deputy Director The annual conference of the CELIS Institute dealt with the pivotal question of Investment Screening and Economic Security and its current challenges. CFIS 2023 was held in Prague from 11 – 13 October 2023 and consisted of a private and a public part.   Following an ...

By Nissim Massarano, Clifford Chance[1]   On 11 July 2023, the UK's Investment Security Unit ("ISU") released its annual report on the operation of the UK National Security and Investment ("NSIA") regime for the period covering 1 April 2022 – 31 March 2023 (here). The Annual Report provides aggregated data on the operation of the regime, including insights into the ...

Germany – Upcoming Investment Screening Act and the 20th Amendment to the AWV There is a new Investment Screening Act upcoming in Germany – the new law is expected to separate the foreign direct investment screening rules from the German Foreign Trade Laws (contained in AWG and AWV), restructuring them into an isolated law. A preliminary draft is predicted to ...