Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2670 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 10 December 2025 the European Commission opened an in-depth investigation under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) — its first ex officio Phase II investigation — into whether Chinese state-controlled security-scanner producer Nuctech received foreign subsidies enabling it to offer prices and conditions that EU competitors could not match across airport, port, and border-crossing markets. Nuctech Technology, controlled by Tsinghua Tongfang (PRC state-linked), operates EU subsidiaries in Poland and the Netherlands (Nuctech Warsaw and Nuctech Netherlands), supplying threat-detection scanners to roughly 80% of EU airports and 70% of EU sea and land border crossings. The case (FS.100068) followed April 2024 unannounced FSR dawn raids at Nuctech's Polish and Dutch premises — one of the first uses of FSR inspection powers — and sets a precedent for ex officio scrutiny of state-subsidised foreign incumbents beyond the M&A and public-procurement tracks where FSR had previously operated.

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.

The European Commission adopted Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1197 on 19 June 2025, published in the Official Journal on 20 June 2025 and applicable from 30 June 2025. It imposes the EU's first-ever International Procurement Instrument (IPI) measure, excluding tenders submitted by economic operators originating in China from EU public procurement contracts for medical devices (CPV codes 33100000-1 to 33199000-1) valued at EUR 5,000,000 or more net of VAT. Even where a non-Chinese bidder wins, no more than 50% of the contract's value may be sourced from China-origin medical devices (IPI Article 8(1)). Contracting authorities may waive the measure only where solely Chinese bidders meet requirements or for overriding public-interest reasons (IPI Article 9(1)).