By issuing a guidance note to European chancelleries on Wednesday 25 March to protect critical European sectors, the European Commission is seeking to speed up the implementation of the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) screening regulation and to effectively address the fallout from the coronavirus crisis.
Indeed, the European Union is already preparing for an acute economic recession as a result of the measures adopted to stem the spread of COVID-19. As a result the Commission is concerned about the vulnerability of European companies, particularly in key strategic sectors.
While the extraordinary European Council could begin the first lines of thought on economic recovery (see separate article), the Commission wants to ensure that strategic European assets weakened by the coronavirus crisis are properly protected. Indeed, its regulation on the screening of foreign direct investment (FDI), which covers all FDI into critical European infrastructure - energy, aerospace, water control, transport, key technologies, and defence, as well as food safety, health, media, data processing, electoral and financial infrastructure, and real estate - will only be fully implemented by Member States in October 2020 (see EUROPE 12233/16).
The European Commission has therefore taken the lead in issuing a guidance note to Member States on these issues “in view of the application of the FDI screening regulation”.
The announcement came from its president, Ursula von der Leyen, who said on Twitter: “New guidelines today that protect companies and infrastructure in this crisis against foreign takeovers. We help Member States screen offers from outside Europe. The EU will remain open to foreign direct investment, but we need to balance it with our responsibility to protect”.
However, the detailed contents of this note were not yet available at press time.
Link to the guidelines :https://bit.ly/2WHz5hn (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)