Following its announcement in January 2024 (see EUROPE 13335/1), on Wednesday 15 January the European Commission officially recommended that Member States review outbound investments by their companies outside the EU in three strategically important technologies, according to the Commission: semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.
Over the next fifteen months, Member States will have to monitor the transactions in question and analyse the risks they may potentially pose to economic security. This also applies to investments made after 1 January 2021.
The Commission expects the EU27 to submit a progress report on these monitoring activities by July 2025 and a full report by 31 March 2026.
This is one of the actions presented by the Commission as part of the Communication on economic security. With regard to outbound investments, the Commission had suggested collecting data on the risks posed by certain outbound investments in order to determine whether it should impose restrictive measures in the future.
The European Commission asserts that its consultation led to encouraging responses in favour of monitoring outbound investments: “The majority of responses recognise the potential for risks linked to outbound investments and cautiously support the step-by-step action proposed in the Commission's ‘White Paper’”, it said in July last year.
However, according to written comments sent to the Commission as part of this same consultation, which Agence Europe consulted in June 2024, the sectors concerned were largely opposed to reviewing outbound investments. They considered it administratively cumbersome and unnecessary from an economic security point of view (see EUROPE 13435/21). (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)