Norway Security Act Chapter 10 amendment (Lov 2023-06-20 nr. 77) — expanded FDI ownership-control regime

Mechanism

The 2018 Security Act (Sikkerhetsloven, Lov 2018-06-01 nr. 24) installed a national-security control regime, with Chapter 10 imposing a notification and ownership-control duty on qualifying acquisitions of "virksomheter underlagt loven" — undertakings already brought formally within the Act's scope via ministerial designation under § 1-3. In practice this kept the perimeter narrow: only businesses with a direct connection to a "grunnleggende nasjonal funksjon" (GNF — fundamental national function) could be made subject to Chapter 10, leaving large categories of strategically sensitive but un-designated firms outside the screening regime.

Lov 2023-06-20 nr. 77 makes three structural changes:

1. Broader perimeter (§ 1-3). Ministries now have express competence to bring within Chapter 10 (a) undertakings of "vital importance to national-security interests" and (b) undertakings of "significant importance" to fundamental national functions or national-security interests — even where the undertaking is not itself directly linked to a GNF. This converts a narrow sector-by- sector designation regime into a flexible horizontal tool. 2. Notification thresholds. The amendment recalibrates the ownership-control duty (Section 10-1) so that qualifying-interest acquisitions and subsequent escalations across the ownership ladder trigger notification. The Prop. 95 L design retains the layered threshold model and lowers the entry trigger relative to the original 2018 framework, with the lowest reporting tier set so that minority strategic stakes are now in-scope. 3. Enforcement powers and standstill (§ 10-3). The King in Council retains the authority to prohibit, condition (e.g. impose undertakings on board composition, supply chain, security clearance), or unwind acquisitions found to pose an unacceptable risk to national-security interests, and the amendments tighten standstill and clarify administrative-sanction architecture.

The screening is administered jointly by the relevant sectoral ministry (depending on the target's industry), the Ministry of Justice and Public Security (overall security coordination), and Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet (NSM, the national security authority), with the Ministry of Defence involved where defence interests are touched. NSM publishes operational guidance on eierskapskontroll under its sikkerhetsloven-og-forskrifter portal.

The Storting adopted the bill on 9 June 2023 (Lovvedtak 88 (2022-2023)), royal assent followed on 20 June 2023, and the amendment entered into force on 1 July 2023. A subsequent regulation on Chapter 10 ownership-control procedures and overtredelsesgebyr (administrative penalties) was put to public consultation (høring) by the Government later in 2023 and is being phased in.

Downstream implications

• Norway moves from a narrow, classified-undertaking control regime to

a horizontal FDI screening architecture comparable in scope to the EU FDI-screening regimes (Denmark Act 2021, Sweden Act 2023:560, Finland Act 172/2012 as amended, Netherlands Wet Vifo, Austria InvKG) — but Norway, as an EEA/non-EU state, sits outside the EU cooperation mechanism under Regulation 2019/452 and operates the regime unilaterally with bilateral information exchange.

• Closes a long-standing gap in the Nordic FDI-screening map. Norway

hosts critical Arctic energy and subsea-cable infrastructure, NATO's Joint Warfare Centre in Stavanger, the world's largest sovereign-wealth fund (Norges Bank Investment Management, ~USD 1.6T AUM) and substantial cross-border M&A volume in seafood, hydropower, offshore-wind, defence-electronics, and emerging-tech, all of which are now potentially in-scope.

• Concrete transaction friction concentrated in: Chinese or Russian

acquisitions of Norwegian defence-tech, subsea-cable, sensor, and critical-infrastructure firms; private-equity buyouts of dual-use technology vendors; minority stakes in sovereign-relevant suppliers where the new lower threshold tier captures interests that the 2018-2023 regime would have ignored.

• Operationalises a layered Norwegian economic-security stack:

Sikkerhetsloven Chapter 10 (this filing) for ownership control; export-control regulation 2014/Annex III (extended in 2024 to cover emerging technologies — see 2024-10-03-norway-export-control- annex-iii-emerging-technologies) for outbound dual-use trade; and sectoral consent regimes for hydropower, fisheries, and the petroleum sector.

Open questions

• Final notification-threshold ladder under the implementing

regulation — Prop. 95 L proposed a multi-tier model; the in-force threshold percentages and aggregation rules across affiliated acquirers should be confirmed against the implementing forskrift once finalised.

• Volume of Chapter-10 notifications since 1 July 2023 — Norway has

not yet published consolidated annual figures comparable to the EU Commission's Article 5 cooperation-mechanism statistics.

• Coordination architecture with the EU FDI cooperation network

under Regulation 2019/452 — Norway, as an EEA state, is not a formal participant; bilateral information-sharing arrangements with EU member states are under development.

• Interaction with the National Security Authority's ongoing

expansion of "fundamental national functions" designations under § 1-3 (4) — each new GNF designation can extend Chapter 10 coverage to additional sectors without further legislation.