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On 19 May 2026, Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced a further overhaul of Australia's foreign investment framework under the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act 1975. The package introduces a performance target of processing all low-risk applications within 30 days from 1 January 2027, expands the exemption-certificate regime for repeat low-risk investors, and eliminates approval requirements for certain low-risk transaction types. Countervailing measures tighten the framework: enhanced compliance and enforcement powers are added for avoidance and non-compliance, and screening requirements are explicitly increased for sensitive sectors including critical minerals, critical infrastructure, critical technology, sensitive data, and defence-site-proximate assets.

The UK laid the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/543) before Parliament on 19 May 2026; it came into force on 20 May 2026. The instrument inserts a new Chapter 4KA (regulations 46Z23A-46Z23G) into the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, prohibiting the import into the UK of uranium (HS 2844.10/2844.20/2844.30) that originates in or is consigned from Russia, the direct or indirect acquisition of Russian-origin or Russia-located uranium, and the supply or delivery of uranium from Russia to a third country — plus associated technical assistance, financial services/funds, and brokering services. Each prohibition carries a criminal offence with a reasonable-cause-to- suspect defence, subject to narrow exceptions and licensing grounds at regulations 16-19 of the amending instrument. The same instrument separately extends the existing ban on imports of relevant (2709-origin) Russian crude to cover oil products refined from that crude in a third country (new regulations 46Z9F-46Z9I).

President Trump issued five Presidential Determinations on 20 April 2026 under Section 303 of the Defense Production Act of 1950 (50 U.S.C. § 4533), invoking the authority granted by Executive Order 14156 (Declaring a National Energy Emergency, signed 20 January 2025). The five determinations cover: (1) domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics; (2) large-scale energy and energy-related infrastructure development, manufacturing, and deployment; (3) natural gas transmission, processing, storage, and LNG capacity; (4) coal supply chains and baseload power generation; (5) grid infrastructure, equipment, and supply chain. Each determination authorises the relevant Cabinet Secretary (primarily Energy) to use DPA §303 powers — direct loans, loan guarantees, purchase commitments, and equity investments — to expand domestic capacity in the named category.

India's Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the Bharat Audyogik Vikas Yojna (BHAVYA) on 18 March 2026 with a ₹33,660 crore (~USD 4.0bn) outlay over six years (FY 2026-27 to FY 2031-32) to develop 100 plug-and-play industrial parks of 100-1,000 acres each across all states and Union Territories. Financial assistance of up to ₹1 crore per acre supports core infrastructure (internal roads, underground utilities, drainage, common treatment, ICT), value-added infrastructure (ready-built sheds, built-to-suit units, testing labs, warehousing), and social infrastructure (worker housing). The scheme is sector-agnostic and is implemented by the National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (NICDC) under DPIIT, with states forming Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and committing to single-window clearances. The first phase will deliver 50 parks.

Presidential Decreto 0264, signed on 16 March 2026 by President Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego with Minister of Commerce Diana Marcela Morales Rojas and Minister of Finance Germán Ávila Plazas, sets a 35% MFN import duty on 14 steel and metal-mechanical subpartidas (bars, profiles, tubes, wire products, barbed wire) covering HS chapters 72-73 imported from countries with which Colombia has no free-trade agreement — primarily China, Russia, Turkey, and India. The measure is valid for one year from its entry into force (15 days after Diario Oficial publication on 16 March 2026), after which the Comité de Asuntos Aduaneros, Arancelario y de Comercio Exterior must review its impact. It partially amends Decreto 1881 de 2021 and operationalises the Política Nacional de Reindustrialización (CONPES 4129), the Petro administration's flagship programme to reduce Colombia's hydrocarbon dependence by building new domestic manufacturing capacity.

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 29 January 2026, European Council President António Costa and Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính signed a Joint Statement in Hanoi upgrading EU-Vietnam bilateral relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) — the highest tier in Vietnam's diplomatic hierarchy, placing the EU on the same level as Vietnam's CSPs with China, Russia, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia, France, and the United States. The CSP establishes a reinforced bilateral cooperation framework spanning critical raw materials, semiconductor supply chains, artificial intelligence, trusted 5G infrastructure, climate and energy transition, security and defence (including cyber and maritime), and full implementation of the 2019 EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) tariff-elimination schedule plus ratification of the EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA). It is the EU's eleventh CSP globally and its second in Southeast Asia (after Singapore, 2024), and constitutes the foundational bilateral parent framework for all future EU-Vietnam cooperation under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) Article 13 third-country strategic-project designation pipeline, given Vietnam's approximately 22 Mt rare-earth reserves — the world's second-largest deposit after China.

Germany's first cross-sector federal statute establishing minimum requirements for the physical protection and resilience of critical infrastructure operators (KRITIS) — sectors covered include energy, transport, water, food, ICT, financial services, health, and federal government infrastructure. Transposes EU Directive 2022/2557 (CER Directive on the resilience of critical entities). Identifies operators of critical facilities with Europe-wide significance, mandates national risk analyses for critical services, requires operator risk-management measures and creates a federal incident-reporting regime. Passed by the Bundestag on 29 January 2026, confirmed by the Bundesrat on 6 March 2026, published in BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 66 on 16 March 2026, in force from 17 March 2026.

On 26 December 2025, Japan's Cabinet approved the FY2026 (Reiwa 8) initial budget, which allocates a new JPY 415 billion (~USD 2.7bn) line to the "Low-Carbon Hydrogen Hub Development Support Project" (低炭素水素 等拠点整備支援事業), administered by METI's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE) through JOGMEC under the Hydrogen Society Promotion Act framework enacted in 2024. The programme subsidises Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) and construction costs for shared transport and storage infrastructure -- tanks, pipelines and receiving-terminal equipment -- built jointly by multiple businesses to move low-carbon hydrogen and its derivatives (ammonia, e-methane, synthetic fuels) from import/production points to industrial users. It sits alongside, but is administratively distinct from, JOGMEC's separately-run "price-gap" (kakakusa) 15-year CfD offtake support for hydrogen suppliers. The budget takes effect with Japan's fiscal year on 1 April 2026, subject to ordinary Diet passage in early 2026.

Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) and the Cabinet Office jointly published the Shipbuilding Revival Roadmap (造船業再生ロードマップ) on 26 December 2025, redefining shipbuilding as a "national strategic industry" within an All-Japan shipping-and-shipbuilding framework. The Roadmap targets doubling domestic shipbuilding capacity from ~9 million GT to 18 million GT by 2035 (re-capturing roughly 20% global market share) backed by a ¥1 trillion (~USD 6.4 bn) public-private investment commitment over three staged phases (2026-28 automation, 2029-31 facility expansion, 2032-34 dock-operation support), mandates consolidation of domestic shipbuilders into 1-3 groups by 2028, and is funded in its first three years by a ¥120 bn FY2025 supplementary budget enacted in December 2025.

On 26 December 2025 the President of Kazakhstan signed a law amending the Code "On Subsoil and Subsoil Use" with respect to the hydrocarbon and uranium sectors, followed on 30 December 2025 by a parallel set of amendments implementing presidential instructions on broader subsoil-use governance. Both packages take effect on 2 March 2026. The uranium amendments grant the National Atomic Company Kazatomprom (KAP) a statutory priority right to obtain exploration licences over prospective uranium areas listed in the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme, and to reserve blocks containing uranium mineralisation or deposits. Where uranium mineralisation is discovered on a solid-mineral block held by a third-party subsoil-user, an extension of that licence is conditional on the licensee surrendering the uranium-bearing block to the State; private subsoil-users no longer obtain priority production rights for uranium they discover. The amendments also raise the minimum direct or indirect Kazatomprom interest in any uranium mining project from 50% to 75%, and permit subsequent transfer to investors or joint-venture partners only subject to that 75% floor. The 30 December 2025 package establishes the National Geological Service as a non-privatisable national operator subordinate to the authorised subsoil-exploration agency and as the operator responsible for managing geological information; it also creates a Unified Subsoil Use Platform digital infrastructure (open geological-information database integrated with the Unified State System for Management of the Fuel and Energy Complex). The hydrocarbon track of the law shortens block-reservation periods and pushes unallocated plots into electronic-auction allocation to accelerate competitive exploration. The amendments accompany an announced USD 500m state geological-exploration programme.

The Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2025 (No 81 of 2025) is the largest rewrite of New Zealand's Overseas Investment Act 2005 since the 2018 residential-land amendment. The Bill (Government Bill 171) was introduced by the Minister of Finance in June 2025, passed all three readings in the House of Representatives, received Royal Assent on 19 December 2025, and was brought into force on 6 March 2026 by the Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2025 Commencement Order 2026 (SL 2026/2). The Act replaces the OIA's residual "investor test" discretion with a single statutory national-interest test applied to all "sensitive asset" transactions, introduces a new s 29B repeat-investor mechanism (Treasury does not re-litigate investor risk factors on subsequent applications outside strategically important businesses), creates new military / dual-use technology call-in transactions and critical-direct-supplier call-in transactions (amended s 85), and adds a no-change-of-control transaction category. Administered by The Treasury (policy lead) and Toitū Te Whenua LINZ (operations / case handling), with consent decisions issued by the responsible Ministers.

Decreto Supremo Nº 5503, signed 17 December 2025 by the Paz administration on its first business day in office, declares a national Economic, Financial, Energy and Social Emergency and enacts a 120-article comprehensive stabilization package. Headline measures: a 15-year fiscal and legal stability guarantee for "strategic" foreign investment in mining, hydrocarbons, energy, agro-industry, infrastructure and export-manufacturing; a fast-track 30-day investment-approval procedure; 0% import tariff on industrial machinery, equipment and key inputs through 2026; accelerated depreciation for 2026 fixed-asset acquisitions (excluding extractive mining and hydrocarbons); discretionary write-off of pre-October 2025 tax interest and penalties; and elimination of fuel subsidies (with a 6-month transition price freeze). The decree restructures Bolivia's investment-incentive architecture and signals a pivot from the Morales/Arce-era resource nationalism toward foreign-capital attraction — directly material for the Salar de Uyuni lithium pipeline (CBC, Uranium One, Citic Guoan tenders).

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 11 December 2025 the US Department of State announced the inaugural Pax Silica Summit, held in Washington D.C. on 12 December 2025, at which the United States, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Israel signed the non-binding Pax Silica Declaration. The declaration commits signatories to coordinate "trusted" supply chains across the full technology stack — software, frontier foundation models, network infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, transportation logistics, minerals refining and processing, and energy — explicitly to reduce "coercive dependencies." The coalition has since expanded to add the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Qatar, Sweden and India (signed 20 February 2026 at the India AI Impact Summit), and on 26 March 2026 State announced a USD 250 million Pax Silica Fund intended to catalyse trusted-capital co-investment in critical-minerals processing and semiconductor supply chains.

On 4 December 2025, the United States and the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement on Trade and Investment, executed at a White House trilateral ceremony alongside the parallel U.S.-Rwanda framework and witnessed by President Trump, President Tshisekedi (DRC), and President Kagame (Rwanda). The Agreement creates a Strategic Minerals Reserve (SMR) and a Strategic Asset Reserve (SAR) under DRC sovereignty, gives U.S. persons preferential access to SAR assets, and commits DRC and its state-owned enterprises to route at least 30% of their commercialised cobalt volumes through the Sakania-Lobito Corridor within five years. A Joint Steering Committee (JSC) co-chaired by State and DRC's Ministry of Economy holds its inaugural meeting on 4-5 February 2026, designating the initial SAR asset list and launching implementation. The DFC announced a proposed equity investment in a Gécamines-Mercuria copper/cobalt joint venture as the first commercial vehicle under the framework.

On 3 December 2025 President Pedro Sánchez presented the Plan España Auto 2030, a five-year roadmap to mobilise EUR 30 bn (public + private) through 2030 to anchor electric-vehicle, battery and charging- infrastructure manufacturing in Spain. The plan is the first comprehensive Spanish auto-industrial policy of the post-COVID era and is structured as three immediate 2026 envelopes plus a multi-year PERTE-track: (i) Plan Auto+ — EUR 400 m in direct consumer-purchase subsidies effective 1 January 2026, replacing the autonomous-region- managed MOVES III with a centralised dealer-discount model run by MINCOTUR; (ii) MOVES Corredores — EUR 300 m for fast-charging-corridor deployment; and (iii) an additional EUR 580 m allocated to the PERTE VEC (Vehículo Eléctrico y Conectado) industrial-finance instrument in 2026, on top of the EUR ~3 bn already mobilised across previous PERTE VEC calls. The headline ambition is a sub-EUR 25,000 "affordable Spanish electric car" and 95% electrified light-vehicle production by 2035.

On 26 November 2025, Scotland's Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic, Kate Forbes MSP, wrote to the Scottish Parliament's Economy and Fair Work Committee confirming that the preferred bidder for Glasgow Prestwick Airport had withdrawn from the sale process after a "robust commercial deal" had been negotiated. The letter discloses that the proposed acquisition was subject to mandatory notification to the UK Government under the National Security and Investment Act 2021, a reserved matter on which Scottish Ministers cannot comment. Media reporting (Global Trade Alert; Daily Business) identifies the withdrawn bidder as Turkish conglomerate Limak Holding and attributes the collapse directly to the UK national-security review process ("Westminster officials opening an investigation"). The airport, which employs over 500 people directly and anchors an Ayrshire aerospace cluster, remains in Scottish Government public ownership.

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.

On 18 November 2025, the European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, ESMA, and EIOPA) jointly designated 19 Critical ICT Third-Party Providers (CTPPs) under DORA Article 31, with immediate effect — the first-ever exercise of direct EU financial-regulator supervision over hyperscale cloud and infrastructure providers. The designated entities include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Deutsche Telekom, Oracle, SAP, IBM, Bloomberg LP, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), Tata Consultancy Services, and Orange, among others. Designation triggers direct oversight by a lead ESA (EBA for banking-critical, ESMA for capital-markets-critical, EIOPA for insurance-critical) via Joint Examination Teams (JETs), with powers to conduct investigations, carry out on-site inspections, and impose fines of up to 1% of average daily worldwide turnover per day for non-compliance.

Germany's transposition of EU Directive 2022/2555 (NIS2), enacted as the "Gesetz zur Umsetzung der NIS-2-Richtlinie und zur Regelung wesentlicher Grundzüge des Informationssicherheitsmanagements in der Bundesverwaltung." Bundestag passage 13 November 2025; Bundesrat approval 21 November 2025; published as BGBl. I 2025 Nr. 301 on 5 December 2025; entered into force 6 December 2025. The statute designates the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) as the central national supervisory authority over an estimated 29,500 covered entities across 18 critical and important sectors, introduces a mandatory 24h initial / 72h detailed / 1-month final cyber-incident reporting cascade, establishes board-level personal liability for senior management, and applies to SME critical- infrastructure suppliers — with no transitional grace period from entry into force.

On 11 November 2025 President Mamadi Doumbouya officially inaugurated start of operations at the Simandou Integrated Project — Africa's largest greenfield mine-and-infrastructure asset — at a ceremony attended by the presidents of Rwanda and Gabon, China's Vice-Premier, and PMs from Côte d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone. The project comprises Blocks 1–2 (WCS: Winning International / China Hongqiao / Baowu) and Blocks 3–4 (SimFer: Rio Tinto 53% / Chinalco-led JV 47%), connected by 622 km of multi-use trans-Guinean railway to barge and transhipment port facilities at Forécariah, operated by Compagnie du TransGuinéen (CTG). Combined design capacity is up to 120 Mt/yr of high-grade (~65% Fe) iron ore, the largest single addition to seaborne supply since Vale's S11D ramp in 2016, structurally reshaping Australia-Brazil price competition and China's iron-ore import geography.

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 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.

On 18 September 2025 the Bundestag adopted the Gesetz zur Errichtung eines Sondervermögens "Infrastruktur und Klimaneutralität" (SVIKG), authorising up to EUR 500 bn of additional federal borrowing over a twelve-year horizon outside the constitutional debt brake, on the basis of the new Article 143h Grundgesetz inserted by the March 2025 constitutional amendment. The envelope splits into up to EUR 100 bn for Länder and municipal infrastructure (channelled via the companion Länder- und Kommunal-Infrastrukturfinanzierungsgesetz, LuKIFG, passed 9 October 2025), EUR 100 bn transferred to the Klima- und Trans- formationsfonds (KTF) in annual instalments through 2034, and up to EUR 300 bn for additional federal investments in transport, energy/ heat, hospital, education, digitalisation, civil protection and R&D infrastructure. Investments are eligible retroactively from 1 January 2025 and may be approved through 31 December 2036; loan repayment begins no later than 1 January 2044. SVIKG is the largest single industrial-finance instrument launched by an EU member state in the post-2022 industrial-policy cycle.

The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated two Iranian financial facilitators — Alireza Derakhshan and Arash Estaki Alivand — along with more than a dozen Hong Kong- and UAE-based individuals and entities for operating a shadow-banking network that laundered proceeds from Iranian oil sales through front companies and cryptocurrency. The designated addresses account for over $600 million in total inflows, including more than $100 million in cryptocurrency purchases tied to oil sales between 2023 and 2025. Proceeds are alleged to benefit the IRGC-Qods Force and Iran's Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL). This is the second round of OFAC sanctions targeting Iran's shadow-banking infrastructure since National Security Presidential Memorandum 2 (NSPM-2) directed a maximum-pressure campaign on Iran in February 2025.

Act L of 2025 (2025. évi L. törvény) is the Hungarian National Assembly statute that elevates a set of war-emergency government decrees — including the foreign-investment screening regime previously embedded in Government Decree 561/2022 — to permanent statutory level. Promulgated in Magyar Közlöny and entered into force on 19 August 2025, the Act preserves Hungary's "Second Regime" of FDI screening operating in parallel with the General Regime (which implements EU Reg 2019/452 since 2019). The Second Regime applies to a broad set of strategic sectors — energy, transport, communications, telecoms, pharmaceuticals, food processing, defence, financial services and healthcare — and requires approval from the Minister of National Economy for qualifying acquisitions (direct or indirect majority, ≥5% interest, ≥3% in listed companies, or ownership/operation of strategic infrastructure) where transaction value reaches HUF 350 million (~EUR 890,000). Notification is due within 10 days of signing; the MoE originally had 30 business days (extendable +15 calendar days). The Act also entrenches the Hungarian state right of first refusal on photovoltaic generation companies (NACE 35.11'08, excluding sub-50 kVA household installations), exercised through MNV Zrt. The Special Regime is structurally distinct from the General Regime and represents Hungary's peer to the German AWG §§55-62, French Décret 2014-479, Dutch Wet Vifo, and Italian Golden Power. Amended by Act XCIII of 2025 (in force 17 December 2025), which extended the MoE screening deadline to 45 business days and excluded bank-financing security arrangements from notification.

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.

Poland's Sejm adopted on 25 July 2025 — and the President signed on 5 August 2025 (Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1080, in force 7 September 2025) — a Special Act on Strategic Investments in the Field of National Defence and Public Security that creates an accelerated authorisation track for defence and public- security infrastructure projects: a single combined administrative decision issued within 90 days of application, simplified notification regime inside closed military zones, replacement of full environmental and water-law assessments with targeted mitigation, and an exemption from the Public Procurement Law for Ministry-of-National-Defence-cleared unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned weapon platforms and counter-drone systems. The statute is the procedural backbone for Poland's PLN 187bn 2025 defence budget (≈4.7% of GDP, the highest share in NATO) and dovetails with Poland's €43.7bn EU SAFE defence-loan allocation signed in May 2026.

On 2025-07-08 President Trump issued a Section 721 (Defense Production Act) order retroactively prohibiting Hong Kong-based Suirui International Co., Ltd.'s 2020 acquisition of Jupiter Systems, LLC, a US video-wall and audio-visual technology maker, from Foxconn. CFIUS found the transaction posed a national security risk because a Chinese military company holds an indirect interest in Suirui Group and can appoint one of its directors, creating a risk that Jupiter's products — used in military and critical- infrastructure environments — could be compromised. The order requires Suirui to fully divest all interests and rights in Jupiter within 120 days of the order (extendable at CFIUS's discretion) and bars Jupiter from holding interests in Suirui-linked Asian subsidiaries formed after the 2020 deal.

The National Assembly of Vietnam passed the Personal Data Protection Law (Luật Bảo vệ dữ liệu cá nhân), Law No. 91/2025/QH15, on 26 June 2025; it enters into force on 1 January 2026. The PDPL is Vietnam's first statutory (rather than decree-level) personal-data-protection framework, elevating the prior Decree 13/2023/ND-CP (PDPD) regime into a 5-chapter, 39-article primary statute and adding revenue-based administrative penalties of up to 5% of prior-year annual revenue for cross-border data-transfer violations and up to 10x illegal gains for unlawful data trading. The law is implemented by Decree 356/2025/ND-CP (issued 31 December 2025, effective 1 January 2026) and applies extraterritorially to foreign organisations offering services to or processing the personal data of Vietnam residents.

Greece enacted Law 5202/2025 on 22 May 2025, published in Government Gazette ΦΕΚ A' 84 on 23 May 2025 and effective the same day, establishing the country's first national mandatory and suspensory foreign direct investment screening mechanism, aligned with Regulation (EU) 2019/452. The Interministerial Committee for the Control of Foreign Direct Investment (ICC-FDI), with initial procedure run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reviews non-EU acquisitions in "sensitive" sectors (energy, transportation, healthcare, ICT, digital infrastructure) and "particularly sensitive" sectors (national security, defence, cybersecurity, AI, ports and critical subsea infrastructure, borderland tourism). A two-phase review applies — 30 days Phase I, up to 150 days Phase II with EU Cooperation Mechanism notification — and the regime became fully operational on 11 November 2025.

On 11 April 2025 President Javier Milei signed Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia 269/2025, published in the Boletín Oficial on 14 April 2025 (edición Nº 35.647). The decree repealed Decreto 28/2023, formally lifting the cepo cambiario — the foreign-exchange restrictions that had been in continuous operation in some form since November 2011. Operative provisions include elimination of the 80/20 export-proceeds-channelling mandate, removal of individual USD purchase and wire-transfer caps, permission for companies to repatriate post-1-January-2025 dividend profits, and replacement of the daily crawling-peg with a band float within a $1,000–$1,400 ARS/USD corridor with BCRA floor/ceiling intervention rules. The measure was coordinated with the IMF Extended Fund Facility (USD 20bn total; USD 15bn 2025 free-availability tranche) approved 11 April 2025, and operationalises the currency-stability guarantee embedded in the RIGI large- investment regime (Law 27.742, July 2024).

On 9 April 2025 the European Commission adopted Communication COM(2025)165, the AI Continent Action Plan, setting out a five-pillar strategy to make the EU a global AI leader. The pillars are (1) computing infrastructure, (2) data for AI, (3) strategic AI innovation and adoption, (4) AI skills and talent, and (5) regulatory simplification. Headline commitments include mobilising approximately €200bn of public+private investment via the InvestAI initiative announced at the AI Action Summit in Paris (11 February 2025), deploying 13 AI Factories (HPC-anchored shared compute facilities) plus regional antennas, building 5 AI Gigafactories powered by >100,000 advanced AI processors with €20bn earmarked from InvestAI, launching the Apply AI Strategy and Data Union Strategy, and proposing a Cloud and AI Development Act with a public consultation closing 4 June 2025. The one-year progress report (9 April 2026) confirmed 19 AI Factories deployed across EU supercomputers with 13 Antennas providing regional access, and €1bn in Apply AI funding calls earmarked.

Ghana's Parliament passed the Ghana Gold Board Act, 2025 (Act 1140) on 29 March 2025; presidential assent followed on 2 April 2025, with full operational effect from 1 May 2025. The Act repeals PNDCL 219 (1989) and establishes the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) as the sole statutory licensor and exclusive primary buyer, seller, assayer, grader, weigher and exporter of all gold produced by the country's licensed Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) sector. Large-scale mining operations remain outside the monopsony. Effective 1 May 2025, no person other than GoldBod may export ASM gold from Ghana, and all gold trading and marketing businesses must hold a GoldBod licence (application window for Ghanaian-owned firms opened 22 April 2025). Proceeds from all ASM gold exports settle through the Bank of Ghana, channelling foreign-exchange flows from roughly 30% of national gold output — Ghana is the world's #6 producer and Africa's largest — into formal central-bank reserves. The stated objectives are to combat smuggling, capture the smuggling-loss premium for the state, support Bank of Ghana gold-reserves accumulation, and generate foreign exchange. The Act sits alongside the Bank of Ghana's Domestic Gold Purchase Programme as the legal infrastructure for Ghana's gold-as-reserve-asset strategy.

Japan's Cabinet approved an amendment to the Cabinet Order on Inward Direct Investment under the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (FEFTA) on 1 April 2025; the order was promulgated 4 April 2025 and entered into force 19 May 2025. The amendment introduces two new investor categories — Type-A (investors legally or contractually obligated to share information with foreign governments) and Type-B (investors effectively in a comparable position without formal legal obligation) — and eliminates or narrows exemptions from mandatory prior-notification screening for both categories. The primary driver is concern over minority-stake acquisitions by Chinese investors in Japanese listed companies operating in sensitive sectors including cloud computing, telecommunications infrastructure, semiconductor equipment, and advanced electronics. The reform is structurally distinct from the outbound FEFTA catch-all controls overhaul (2025-10-09) and from the Economic Security Promotion Act (2022-05-18); it is the inbound FDI-screening complement to that framework.

On 5 March 2025 the European Commission adopted Communication COM(2025) 95 final, the "Industrial Action Plan for the European Automotive Sector", a horizontal sectoral industrial-policy framework structured around five pillars: innovation and digitalisation, clean mobility, competitiveness and supply-chain resilience, skills and the social dimension, and a global level playing field. Headline financial commitments include EUR 1bn under Horizon Europe for SDV/AI in mobility (2025-2027), EUR 1.8bn Innovation Fund earmark for EU battery cell manufacturing, EUR 350m for next-generation battery R&D (2025-2027), and EUR 570m under the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Facility (2025-2026) for heavy-duty charging corridors. The plan also delivers a targeted CO2-standards flexibility allowing 2025-2027 combined-year compliance for cars and vans, and the launch of the European Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance.

On 24 February 2025 President Prabowo Subianto launched Badan Pengelola Investasi Daya Anagata Nusantara (Danantara), Indonesia's new state investment-management agency, consolidating around USD 900bn–1tn of Indonesian state-owned-enterprise assets — including Pertamina, PLN, Bank Mandiri, BRI, BNI, Telkom, MIND ID, Antam and Inalum — into a single super-holding modelled on Singapore's Temasek. Danantara was created by the Third Amendment to the BUMN Law (Law No. 1 of 2025, enacted 24 February 2025) and Government Regulation No. 10 of 2025 on its organisation and governance, with board appointments formalised by Presidential Regulation No. 30 of 2025. The agency reports directly to the President, bypassing the Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises, and is mandated to deploy SOE balance-sheet capacity into Prabowo's 8% growth target via co-investment in mineral downstreaming, refinery and EV-battery build-out, food security, and semiconductor / data-centre infrastructure.

South Korea's National Assembly passed the Special Act on the Expansion of the National Electricity Network (Law No. 20844) on 19 February 2025 as part of the bipartisan "Energy Trifecta Bill," with promulgation on 25 March 2025 and entry into force on 26 September 2025. The act creates an expedited siting, permitting, and compensation framework for trunk transmission-grid construction, consolidating 35 previously separate regulatory approvals into a single streamlined procedure and targeting a >30% reduction in grid-build timelines. It directly addresses the electricity-infrastructure bottleneck constraining semiconductor fab clusters (Yongin, Pyeongtaek, SK Hynix HBM), sovereign AI datacenter build-out, and EV/battery gigafactory load growth — structurally distinct from the K-Chips Act (fiscal incentives) and the Semiconductor Special Act (regulatory framework), as it unblocks the physical power-delivery constraint those programmes depend on.

Japan's National Diet enacted the Cyber Response Capability Enhancement Act (重要電子計算機に対する不正な行為による被害の防止に関する法律, Law No. 42 of 2025) on 16 May 2025, together with companion arrangement legislation. Commonly known as the Active Cyber Defense (ACD) Law, the statute authorises (i) government monitoring of foreign-origin internet traffic transiting designated Japanese communication infrastructure for national-security threat indicators, (ii) pre-emptive access and neutralisation operations against attacker infrastructure abroad by the National Police Agency and the Self-Defense Forces under unified command, and (iii) mandatory cyber-incident reporting and government cooperation duties on critical-infrastructure operators. Implementation is phased through November 2027, with the NISC reorganised into the National Cybersecurity Office (NCO) under the Cabinet Secretariat from July 2025.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14179 on 23 January 2025 (published in the Federal Register on 31 January 2025 as 90 FR 8741, doc 2025-02172). The order revokes Biden-era Executive Order 14110 of 30 October 2023 ("Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence") and directs federal agencies to identify and rescind, revise, or suspend any policies, regulations, memoranda, or guidance documents adopted pursuant to the revoked Biden order. It mandates that the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy develop an AI Action Plan within 180 days to "sustain and enhance America's global AI dominance." The plan was released on 23 July 2025. EO 14179 reframes US AI industrial-policy posture from safety-first regulation to deregulation, infrastructure investment, and export-competitiveness.

The National Assembly of Vietnam passed the Law on Data (Luật Dữ liệu), No. 60/2024/QH15, on 30 November 2024; it enters into force on 1 July 2025. The Law is Vietnam's first comprehensive horizontal data-governance statute, extending regulation beyond personal data (already covered by Decree 13/2023/ND-CP) to all digital data — public, private, and sectoral. It introduces statutory categories of "important data" (dữ liệu quan trọng) and "core data" (dữ liệu cốt lõi) tied to national-defence and national-security review for cross-border transfer, and establishes the National Data Centre under the Ministry of Public Security plus a statutory data-broker / data-services licensing framework.

Government of Russia Resolution No. 1544, signed by Prime Minister Mishustin on 14 November 2024 and published 15 November 2024, amends Resolution No. 313 of 9 March 2022 (the framework counter-sanctions list of goods restricted for export to "unfriendly" jurisdictions) by adding HS code 2844 20 — uranium enriched in U-235 and its compounds — to Annex 2. The amendment imposes a temporary export ban on enriched uranium to the United States and to legal entities incorporated in US jurisdiction, in force from 16 November 2024 through 31 December 2025. Exports are permitted only under one-off licences issued by the Russian Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSTEC). The measure is an explicit tit-for-tat response to the US Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act (Public Law 118-50, 13 May 2024).

On 18 October 2024 the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan approved Government Resolution No. 868 adopting the Concept of Investment Policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan until 2029. The Concept sets a binding strategic-document target to attract at least US$150 billion in foreign direct investment over 2024-2029 and to raise fixed-capital investment from approximately 15.1% of GDP (2023) toward 23-25.1% of GDP by 2029. Its principal new instruments are (i) Development Bank of Kazakhstan (DBK / BDK) concessional lending at 6% interest for a 10-year tenor for the engineering infrastructure of new industrial projects, (ii) regional investment headquarters (one per oblast) modelled on the existing national Investment Headquarters under the Prime Minister, (iii) a national digital investment platform (invest.gov.kz) for streamlined permitting and investor aftercare, (iv) a unified register of investor issues and complaints administered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the designated FDI-attraction owner, and (v) counter-obligations (localisation, employment, technology transfer) imposed on recipients of state preferences. The Concept is the principal implementing instrument under the 2021 Law on Industrial Policy (Law No. 86-VII ZRK) on the investment-attraction side and is designed to operate alongside the 2023 REE Comprehensive Plan and the 2025 Subsoil Code amendments on the minerals-extraction side.

On 27 June 2024 the Argentine Congress passed Law 27.742, the "Ley de Bases y Puntos de Partida para la Libertad de los Argentinos" ("Ley Bases"), the flagship economic reform of the Milei administration. The law was published in the Boletín Oficial on 8 July 2024 and Title VII established the Régimen de Incentivo para Grandes Inversiones (RIGI) — a promotional regime designed to attract large-scale capex into mining, energy, oil & gas, LNG, steel, forestry, tourism, infrastructure, and technology. Implementing Decree 749/2024 was issued on 23 August 2024 and the regime became fully operational with Resolution 1074/2024 on 22 October 2024. RIGI offers single-project vehicles ("VPUs") that commit at least USD 200M (with sector-specific thresholds rising to USD 600M and up to USD 2B for long-term "strategic export" projects) a 30-year regulatory, tax, customs and foreign-exchange stability guarantee. Headline benefits include a reduced 25% corporate income tax (vs. 35% standard), accelerated depreciation, full deductibility of inflation adjustments, an import-duty exemption on capital goods and inputs, a phased relaxation of central-bank obligations to repatriate and convert export proceeds (20% free after year one, 40% after year two, 100% after year three), and reduced dividend withholding tax. Disputes are subject to international arbitration under ICSID or UNCITRAL rules. As of mid-2025, RIGI's project pipeline reached USD 33.9B in submitted applications, of which roughly USD 15.7B (46.5%) had been approved across nine projects spanning steel (Sidersa), energy/LNG (PAE Southern Energy, YPF Argentina LNG), three mining projects, and infrastructure. The flagship approval was Rio Tinto's USD 2.5B Rincón battery-grade lithium carbonate plant in Salta (initial 53,000 t/yr, scaling to 60,000 t/yr by 2028) — the first mining project approved under the regime, on 21 May 2025. Strategically, RIGI is Argentina's bid to compete with Chile's lithium framework and Brazil's industrial policies for upstream-critical-minerals capex. Combined with the lifting of Argentina's FX controls (cepo cambiario) in April 2025 it sharply re-rates the country's project-economics math for multinationals — particularly in the Lithium Triangle, the Vaca Muerta shale, and pipeline/LNG infrastructure. Whether the 30-year stability guarantee survives a future change of government is the dominant political-risk overhang on the regime.

Japan's Act on the Promotion of Supply and Utilization of Low-Carbon Hydrogen and its Derivatives for a Smooth Transition to a Decarbonized, Growth-Oriented Economic Structure (the Hydrogen Society Promotion Act) was enacted by the Diet on 17 May 2024, promulgated 24 May 2024, and came into force on 23 October 2024. It is Japan's first legislation specifically targeting hydrogen. The Act establishes a 15-year price-gap Contract-for-Difference (CfD) subsidy backstopping the delivered cost of certified low-carbon hydrogen, ammonia, synthetic methane and synthetic fuels supplied to Japan, plus a "Hub Support" capex grant for shared port/pipeline/storage infrastructure. METI is the competent authority and JOGMEC the implementing agency. Total subsidy envelope is ~3 trillion yen (~USD 20bn) financed via GX Transition Bonds under the 2023 GX Promotion Act.

President Biden signed into law on 13 May 2024 the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act (Division H of the National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, Public Law 118-50). The law bans imports to the United States of unirradiated low-enriched uranium (LEU) produced in Russia or by Russian state entities, effective immediately, with a waiver mechanism allowing the Department of Energy to grant case-by-case exceptions through 2027 where no alternative supply is available. The law also authorised up to $2.72B to support US uranium enrichment capacity via CENTRUS and allied enrichment partnerships.

Japan's National Diet enacted the Act on the Protection and Use of Critical Economic Security Information (重要経済安保情報の保護及び活用に関する法律, Act No. 27 of 2024) on 10 May 2024; it was promulgated on 17 May 2024 and came into full operation on 16 May 2025. The law establishes Japan's first peace-time economic-security clearance regime extending to private-sector employees. It designates "Critical Economic Security Information" (CESI) covering threat-intelligence on critical-infrastructure cyber attacks, regulatory-review information on essential infrastructure, and vulnerability data on critical-product supply chains; mandates Cabinet Office "適性評価" (suitability assessment) for cleared personnel; and imposes criminal penalties of up to five years' imprisonment for unauthorised disclosure. The CESI Act complements the 2022 Economic Security Promotion Act (ESPA), closing the information-protection gap and aligning Japan's framework with Five Eyes and EU partners for joint R&D and dual-use cooperation.