Selling its future competitiveness: why Europe needs to screen foreign investments

The author contends that Europe is vulnerable to 'foreign economic statecraft' because it lacks a unified investment screening mechanism. While Chinese investment in high-tech sectors has surged, often driven by state-owned enterprises and strategic plans like 'Made in China 2025', the EU relies on a fragmented 'hodgepodge' of national regimes. The document highlights failures in Germany's response to the acquisitions of Kuka and Aixtron as evidence of this helplessness. It proposes that the EU should adapt legislation to help Member States block dangerous mergers and create a common consultative body to 'Europeanise' national decision-making, citing the US CFIUS model as a gold standard for such oversight.

• Chinese foreign direct investment in Europe increased significantly, with over 35 billion euros flowing into European companies, representing a 77 per cent increase.
• A large portion of Chinese investment is strategic rather than purely economic, with nearly 70 per cent of investment in Europe in 2015 conducted by state-owned enterprises using cheap capital.
• China has shifted its investment focus from low-value manufacturing to high-value added sectors such as robotics, software, and advanced machinery, aligned with the 13th Five-Year-Plan and the Made in China 2025 strategy.
• European nations lack a unified screening regime, instead possessing a fragmented collection of national security rules that vary from broad sector-specific blocks to no legislation at all.
• The German government was unable to prevent the acquisition of the robotics company Kuka by the Chinese firm Midea, despite the company being viewed as essential to the future of German industry.
• The US government blocked the acquisition of German company Aixtron by China's Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund, alerting Germany that the technology could be used for military, radar, and satellite applications.
• The US Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) is presented as a successful model; in 2012, it investigated 45 of 114 merger notices, leading to one executive block and 22 abandoned deals.
• The author suggests the EU should create a common consultative body or taskforce, similar to the European Gas Coordination Group, to coordinate the impact of foreign acquisitions across borders.

APA

Kefferpütz, R. (2017). Selling its future competitiveness: why Europe needs to screen foreign investments. Green European Journal. https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/selling-its-future-competitiveness-why-europe-needs-to-screen-foreign-investments/

Chicago

Kefferpütz, Roderick. Selling its future competitiveness: why Europe needs to screen foreign investments. Green European Journal, 2017. https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/selling-its-future-competitiveness-why-europe-needs-to-screen-foreign-investments/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Kefferpütz |first1=Roderick |title=Selling its future competitiveness: why Europe needs to screen foreign investments |publisher=Green European Journal |date=13 June 2017 |url=https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/selling-its-future-competitiveness-why-europe-needs-to-screen-foreign-investments/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{kefferptz2017selling, author = {Kefferpütz, Roderick}, title = {{Selling its future competitiveness: why Europe needs to screen foreign investments}}, institution = {Green European Journal}, year = {2017}, month = jun, url = {https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/selling-its-future-competitiveness-why-europe-needs-to-screen-foreign-investments/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }