Germany's 17th AWV Amendment Expands Mandatory FDI Screening to 16 Additional High-Tech Sectors

Mechanism

The 17th AWV amendment is the fourth tightening of Germany's FDI-screening ordinance in roughly twelve months, implementing changes required for Germany's full participation in the EU-wide investment-screening cooperation mechanism under Regulation (EU) 2019/452. It operates by expanding Sec. 55a AWV, the sector-specific (as opposed to cross-sectoral critical-infrastructure) notification list -- the mechanism BMWi uses to require advance notice and clearance before a non-EU/EFTA investor can close on a qualifying stake.

Sixteen sectors were added to the existing eleven, covering satellite and space infrastructure, AI, robotics, semiconductors, cybersecurity products, autonomous vehicles and unmanned aircraft, additive manufacturing, quantum technology, and critical raw materials. Any of these newly listed sectors now triggers mandatory notification at a 10% voting-rights threshold (versus the general cross-sectoral 25% threshold that otherwise applies), with review gates repeating at 20/25/40/50/75%.

Downstream implications

• Non-EU (particularly Chinese) acquirers of German targets in the newly

listed sectors now face a formal pre-closing notification obligation at a much lower stake threshold than the general regime, extending the screening perimeter opened by the 2020 15th and 2021 16th amendments.

• Critical raw materials was added as a stand-alone sector for the first

time in this amendment, giving BMWi a direct FDI-screening lever over foreign stakes in German critical-minerals processing/refining assets, independent of the cross-sectoral critical-infrastructure test.

Open questions

• No BMWi figure located on the number of additional transactions this

amendment actually pulled into the mandatory-notification regime in its first year, so no volume/value magnitude is stated here.