Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 recent

On 10 February 2026 in Baku, US Vice President JD Vance and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership — a foundational bilateral instrument covering five cooperation tracks: economy and trade, energy, connectivity and digital development (including AI), security and defense, and critical-minerals transit. The Charter commits both governments to facilitate the transit of critical minerals via the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor to global markets, and formally recognises the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) as the multi-modal connectivity link between mainland Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The instrument builds on the 8 August 2025 MoU signed in Washington during the Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Summit that established the Strategic Working Group tasked with drafting the Charter, and marks the first US Vice-Presidential visit to Azerbaijan since Dick Cheney in 2008.

On 11 December 2025 the Council of the EU presidency, the European Parliament, and the European Commission reached provisional political (trilogue) agreement on the revision of Regulation (EU) 2019/452 establishing a framework for the screening of foreign direct investments into the Union, concluding interinstitutional negotiations on the Commission's proposal of 24 January 2024. The revised regime upgrades the 2019 cooperation-mechanism-only framework into a hybrid harmonised/mandatory regime: all 27 Member States must establish FDI screening mechanisms (replacing the current patchwork in which some Member States have no mechanism at all); mandatory minimum sectoral scope is set EU-wide and covers dual-use items, military equipment, hyper-critical technologies (general-purpose AI with space/defence relevance, quantum technologies, semiconductors), critical raw materials, critical entities in energy/transport/digital infrastructure, electoral infrastructure, and certain financial-system entities; foreign investments routed through EU subsidiaries fall within the perimeter; a shared database prevents Member-State arbitrage; and an optional single electronic-filing portal becomes available if requested by at least nine Member States. Screening decisions remain the exclusive responsibility of the Member State in which the investment is made. Once the Regulation enters into force (after Council and Parliament formal adoption and OJ publication, both pending as of the political-agreement date), the new rules will apply after an 18-month transition period — implementation expected toward the end of 2027.

Vietnam's 15th National Assembly adopted the Law on Investment 2025 (Law No. 143/2025/QH15) at its 10th session on 11 December 2025, effective 1 March 2026. The law replaces the 2020 Law on Investment (Law 61/2020/QH14) as the umbrella FDI framework. Article 19 lets foreign investors establish enterprises in Vietnam without a prior investment project, unlocking holding-company / regional-headquarters structures. A fast-track Special Investment Procedure (SIP) covers industrial parks, export-processing zones, hi-tech parks, concentrated digital-technology zones, free-trade zones, international financial centres and economic-zone functional areas, targeting semiconductor, data-centre and 5G/digital-infrastructure capex. Appendix IV abolishes 38 conditional business sectors and adjusts 20 others (from 1 July 2026 only 199 conditional sectors remain). Operationalised by Decree 96/2026/ND-CP (issued and effective 31 March 2026) and Decree 103/2026/ND-CP for outbound investment.

On 9 December 2025, the Qatar Investment Authority's newly formed AI subsidiary Qai and Brookfield Asset Management announced a USD 20 billion strategic investment partnership to develop AI infrastructure, including fully integrated compute facilities, in Qatar and select international markets. The venture is a cornerstone of Brookfield's global AI infrastructure program (via the Brookfield Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Fund, BAIIF), which targets mobilising up to USD 100 billion globally, and is positioned as advancing Qatar National Vision 2030's push to become a Middle East AI-services hub. It is state-backed capital deployment (sovereign wealth fund subsidiary) rather than a regulatory or trade-control measure, and Global Trade Alert classifies it as an unspecified state-aid intervention.

ECOFIN on 12 December 2025 adopted a Council Implementing Decision approving the 4th amendment to Poland's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Krajowy Plan Odbudowy, KPO), following Commission proposal C(2025) 7998 final of 19 November 2025. The amendment modifies 80 measures within the plan while keeping Poland's total financial contribution under the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) unchanged at EUR 25,276,853,716 in grants, alongside an estimated EUR 20.6 bn REPowerEU chapter envelope. Adopted in parallel with amendments for Austria, Cyprus, Czechia, France, Greece, Latvia, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia, this amendment continues the structural pivot — first opened by the May 2025 third amendment — that allows Poland to redirect post-COVID recovery funds toward defence-industrial and dual-use spending given the NATO eastern-flank context.

Thailand's Board of Investment issued Notification No. 9/2568 on 14 November 2025, amending the Activity List Eligible for Investment Promotion by splitting the prior single data-center category into two tiers based on power-usage efficiency: high-efficiency data centers (PUE ≤ 1.3) qualify for an 8-year corporate income tax (CIT) exemption, while other data centers receive a 5-year CIT exemption. A precursor restructure (Notification No. 5/2568, 5 June 2025) first introduced the two-tier category split; Notification 9/2568 added location-differentiated terms based on the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). New benefit conditions require applicants to submit a Thailand-benefit plan — training programmes, academic/R&D partnerships, local supply-chain support, or knowledge transfer to Thai nationals — that must be implemented before CIT exemption benefits can be exercised.

The Hrvatski sabor (Croatian Parliament) unanimously adopted the Act on Screening of Foreign Direct Investments on 24 October 2025; the law was published in Narodne Novine 136/2025 and entered into force on 13 November 2025. It establishes Croatia's first-ever statutory horizontal FDI-screening regime, implementing EU Regulation 2019/452 in Croatian law. The Act captures direct or indirect acquisitions by non-EU investors of at least 10 % of share capital, voting rights or property rights in Croatian entities operating in sensitive sectors (defence, dual-use, critical infrastructure, critical minerals, emerging tech, sensitive personal data, energy, transport, health, digital infrastructure, media, financial services). The reviewing authority must decide within 120 days, exceptionally 150 days, of a complete application. Croatia was one of the last EU Member States without a horizontal screening law.

On 17 October 2025 Türkiye's Ministry of Industry and Technology opened the "HIT-Data Centre" call, a USD 1.5 billion support tranche under the HIT-30 High Technology Investment Programme (see `2024-07-26-turkiye-hit-30-high-technology-investment-programme`), targeting data-centre facilities of at least 30 MW IT capacity with at least 50% AI-compatible hardware and a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.4 or lower. The call was announced alongside three parallel HIT-30 sector calls — a USD 1.6 billion "HIT-AI" call (see `2025-10-17-turkiye-hit-ai-cloud-infrastructure-call`), a USD 300 million "HIT-Quantum" call, and a USD 1 billion "HIT-Industrial Robot" call — and offers the same tax, grant, financing, employment, and market-development instrument stack used across the HIT-30 programme. Global Trade Alert logs this single government call as two separate "interventions" (tax/social insurance relief and unspecified state aid) under state act 95013.

On 18 September 2025 Brazil's federal government published Medida Provisória (Provisional Measure) 1318/2025, creating REDATA — the Special Taxation Regime for Datacenter Services — alongside a parallel IT-export regime (REPES). REDATA zeroes federal taxes on servers, storage, networking, cooling and other datacenter capital equipment for qualifying operators from 1 January 2026, conditioned on 100% renewable/zero-carbon energy sourcing, a 2% of investment R&D-in-Brazil commitment, and preferential use of Brazilian- manufactured components. The Finance Ministry projects R$5.2 billion in forgone-tax incentives in 2026 alone, with potential to unlock up to R$2 trillion in private datacenter investment over ten years. REDATA is framed as implementing the National Datacenter Policy (PNDC) under the Nova Indústria Brasil industrial-policy umbrella.

Czech Act No. 265/2025 Sb., promulgated in the Sbírka zákonů on 4 August 2025 and entering into force on 1 November 2025, is the first material amendment of the Czech Republic's foundational FDI screening statute (Act No. 34/2021 Sb.) since its enactment. The amendment broadens the perimeter of mandatory pre-closing FDI screening by cross-referencing the simultaneously-enacted Cybersecurity Act (Act No. 264/2025 Sb., transposing NIS2 Directive 2022/2555): entities designated as providers of "regulated services" under the Cybersecurity Act's "regime of higher obligation" automatically fall within mandatory FDI-screening scope, extending screening reach beyond the prior military-material / dual-use / critical-infrastructure perimeter to cover a broad sweep of digital, technology, healthcare, energy, and financial-services operators. The amendment also adds a confidentiality-sharing channel between MPO and NÚKIB, enabling coordinated supply-chain-security assessments for high-risk-vendor reviews under the new Cybersecurity Act.

Czech Republic's first standalone federal statute on the resilience of critical-infrastructure entities — Act No. 266/2025 Sb., "Zákon o odolnosti subjektů kritické infrastruktury a o změně souvisejících zákonů" (Critical Infrastructure Act). Transposes EU Directive 2022/2557 (CER Directive on the resilience of critical entities) into Czech law and removes critical-infrastructure regulation from the earlier crisis-management law (Zákon č. 240/2000 Sb.) into a dedicated statute. Covers the 11 CER-Directive sectors (energy, transport, banking, financial-market infrastructure, health, drinking water, wastewater, digital infrastructure, public administration, space, food production-processing-distribution) and obligates designated operators of essential services to conduct risk analyses, implement technical/organisational resilience measures, report incidents to sector-competent authorities, and submit to inspection. Published in the Sbírka zákonů on 4 August 2025; in force 19 August 2025; operator information-obligation deadline 1 March 2026.

The Assembly of Albania (Kuvendi i Republikës së Shqipërisë) adopted Law No. 56/2025 on 11 July 2025, published in Fletorja Zyrtare (Official Gazette) No. 124 of the same date, amending Article 10 of Law No. 7764/1993 "On Foreign Investments" to introduce Albania's first-ever mandatory FDI screening mechanism. The law requires investors to submit applications for screening of any foreign investment "related to or affecting critical public infrastructure, critical technologies, dual-use goods, supply of critical inputs, access to sensitive information, or media freedom" — categories aligned with EU Regulation 2019/452 — while delegating thresholds, timelines, and procedural safeguards to a forthcoming Decision of the Council of Ministers (DCM). Albania becomes the first country in the Western Balkans to establish an investment-screening regime aligned with EU Regulation 2019/452, opening a new issuer-country code (AL) on the IPTM register and anchoring a regional cluster that currently stands at RS=1, MK=0, BA=0, ME=0, XK=0.

On 12 May 2025, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and PIF Chairman Mohammed bin Salman launched HUMAIN, a new PIF-owned company mandated to "operate and invest across the artificial intelligence (AI) value chain as a unified operating company" — spanning next-generation data centers, AI/cloud infrastructure, and a multimodal Arabic large language model (ALLAM). PIF's wholly-owned Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI) was folded into HUMAIN at launch. The company is a Vision 2030 vehicle for economic diversification away from oil into a state-controlled AI industrial base, and has since signed multi-billion-dollar infrastructure and chip-supply deals with NVIDIA, AWS, AMD, Cisco, and xAI, and a USD 1.2bn financing package with Saudi's National Infrastructure Fund toward a stated 6.6GW domestic data-center capacity target over the next decade.

Decreto-legge n. 19 of 2 March 2024 ("PNRR-quater"), converted into Law n. 56 of 29 April 2024, delivers Italy's fourth package of NGEU/PNRR implementation measures. Article 38 establishes the Transizione 5.0 plan, a EUR 6.3 billion tax-credit programme financed from ECOFIN-derived RepowerEU allocations targeting combined digital and energy-transition capital expenditure by Italian firms in fiscal years 2024–2025. The plan requires a certified minimum energy-consumption reduction (≥3% at production-structure level or ≥5% at process level) and relies on the GSE (Gestore Servizi Energetici) for ex-ante and ex-post energy-savings audits, making this the first Italian industrial-policy instrument to hard-wire measurable energy efficiency into capex-incentive eligibility.

Directive (EU) 2022/2557 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 on the resilience of critical entities, published OJ L 333, 27 December 2022, entered into force 16 January 2023, with Member State transposition deadline 17 October 2024 (rules applicable from 18 October 2024). The CER Directive repeals Council Directive 2008/114/EC on European Critical Infrastructures, extending the scope from two sectors (energy, transport) to eleven essential-service sectors: energy, transport, banking, financial market infrastructures, health, drinking water, wastewater, digital infrastructure, public administration, space, and food. Member States must adopt national resilience strategies, conduct risk assessments at least every four years, identify "critical entities" providing essential services whose disruption would have significant cross-border impacts, and ensure those entities implement technical, security, and organisational resilience measures, business-continuity plans, incident-reporting obligations, and personnel-security background checks. The CER Directive is the physical and hybrid resilience twin to the NIS2 Directive (2022/2555) — the two instruments form the binding EU critical-infrastructure-protection architecture replacing the 2008/114/EC regime.

Directive (EU) 2022/2555 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 on measures for a high common level of cybersecurity across the Union (NIS 2 Directive), published OJ L 333, 27 December 2022, entered into force 16 January 2023. NIS2 repeals and substantially expands the 2016 NIS1 Directive (2016/1148), extending the scope from ~7 sectors to 18 enumerated essential and important sectors, imposing binding cybersecurity risk- management and incident-reporting obligations on covered entities, introducing board-level management accountability, and mandating Member State transposition by 17 October 2024. NIS2 is the structural EU statutory anchor for national cybersecurity frameworks across the bloc, operating alongside DORA (Reg 2022/2554) for financial-sector digital resilience and CRA (Reg 2024/2847) for product cybersecurity.