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Last amendment: > on 2026-06-16.
The revised Regulation will replace Regulation (EU) 2019/452 — the EU's first FDI-screening framework, which has been in force since 11 October 2020 — with a structurally different instrument. The 2019 regime created only a cooperation mechanism between Member States and the Commission: it did not require Member States to have a national screening mechanism in the first place, did not harmonise sectoral scope, and gave the Commission and Member States only information-sharing and non-binding opinions. As of December 2025, six Member States still had no national screening regime, and sectoral scope diverged sharply across the 21 that did.
The Commission tabled its revision proposal on 24 January 2024 as the centrepiece of the European Economic Security Package (COM(2024) 23 final). After ~22 months of interinstitutional negotiations — Parliament adopted its first-reading position in June 2025, Council adopted its general approach later in 2025 — trilogue concluded with the 11 December 2025 provisional agreement.
The agreed text upgrades the framework along five structural axes:
1. Mandatory screening regimes in all 27 Member States. Every Member State must establish a national mechanism that meets the common EU minimum. The Member States that currently have no mechanism (e.g., Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Greece — partial — among others) must legislate one within the 18-month transition. 2. Mandatory minimum sectoral scope EU-wide. Member States must screen at least: - dual-use items and military equipment; - "hyper-critical" technologies — general-purpose AI with relevance to space or defence, quantum technologies, advanced semiconductors; - critical raw materials; - critical entities under the CER Directive in energy, transport, and digital infrastructure; - electoral infrastructure; - certain financial-system entities. Member States retain discretion to screen beyond this floor. 3. EU subsidiaries covered. Foreign investments routed through an EU-domiciled subsidiary fall within the screening perimeter — closing a major loophole in the 2019 regime under which non-EU capital could acquire EU targets via an EU intermediate without triggering FDI review in most Member States. 4. Anti-arbitrage shared database. A new EU-level database tracks transactions notified in any Member State, preventing investors from forum-shopping to the jurisdiction with the laxest review. 5. Optional single-portal filing. If at least nine Member States request it, the Commission will operate a single electronic portal for FDI notifications across multiple Member States — reducing compliance burden for multi-jurisdiction transactions.
Member State sovereignty over outcomes is preserved: screening decisions (authorise / condition / prohibit) remain exclusively the Member State's. However, when the Commission or other Member States have issued comments / opinions, the screening Member State must explain how those were considered, including reasons for any disagreement — a soft accountability layer absent from the 2019 regime.
from "cooperation mechanism only" (2019/452) to "mandatory harmonised regimes everywhere + mandatory minimum scope + EU subsidiaries in-scope + anti-arbitrage database" is the largest expansion of EU economic-security FDI tooling since the original 2019 framework.
already-filed outbound-investment Commission Recommendation 2025/63 of 15 January 2025. Together these close both directions of the EU economic-security investment perimeter (inbound + outbound).
status — the Regulation has not yet been formally adopted by Council and Parliament and is not yet published in the OJ; (ii) Member State control over screening outcomes remains preserved, so the instrument harmonises the process rather than centralising the decision; (iii) 18-month transition delay means no FDI is actually blocked under the new rules before late 2027.
across the mandatory-minimum sectors, with the largest practical impact on Chinese, Gulf-sovereign-fund, and Russia-linked acquirers of EU semiconductor, quantum, AI, critical-raw-material, and defence-relevant targets.
both axes.** Inbound (this Regulation, revising 2019/452) and outbound (Recommendation 2025/63 + signalled 2026-2027 binding instrument) tooling now sits in a single coherent stack.
could previously route an acquisition through a low-friction Member State to avoid scrutiny in a high-friction one. The shared database closes that.
involving the mandatory sectors. The optional single portal will mitigate this for transactions notifying in ≥9 Member States but is not guaranteed to materialise.
legislative deadline** — expect a wave of national FDI-screening bills in 2026-2027, mirroring the wave of NIS2/CER transpositions.
generated only marginal CJEU jurisprudence because of its non-binding cooperation-mechanism nature. The revised regime — with mandatory minimum scope and EU subsidiaries in perimeter — will generate a substantial case-law stream on what counts as "hyper-critical AI", "critical raw materials" in the FDI sense, and the scope of the EU-subsidiary perimeter.
Decreto Asset golden-power expansion (Aug 2023) + Legge 4/2026 golden-power financial-sector extension; Poland investment-control law permanent (Jul 2025); Switzerland IPG (Dec 2025); India DPIIT Press Note 2 (Mar 2026). The EU-wide floor will lift the laggard Member States toward the level these national regimes already operate at.
formally adopt the agreed text and publish in the OJ — Q1 2026 or Q2 2026? The 18-month transition runs from entry into force, so adoption timing directly fixes the 2027 implementation date.
challenge the mandatory-mechanism requirement** on competence grounds, even though FDI screening sits comfortably within shared EU competence under Article 207 TFEU?
Directive critical-entities list and the CRMA strategic-materials list — both of which can be amended by delegated act. Watch how much the de facto FDI-screening perimeter drifts via downstream delegated-act updates after the 18-month transition.
request the optional single electronic portal — or will the Commission's offer go unused, leaving 27 separate filing systems?
reviews subsidies received from third countries by entities active in the EU; the revised FDI regime reviews ownership changes. Transactions can trigger both. How will the Commission coordinate parallel FSR + FDI review timelines?