Understanding National Security Concerns in Light of FDI Screening

Conference: Understanding National Security Concerns in Light of FDI Screening

Steffen Hindelang for two days devoted to national security considerations and Foreign Direct Investments at the Conference on ‘Understanding National Security Concerns in Light of FDI Screening’, 27 to 28 October 2022 in Rome.

Steffen is currently professor of international investment and trade law at Uppsala University in Sweden. He teaches and researches in the areas of international economic law, esp. international investment law, arbitration, and investment secruity, EU law and German public law. He is also faculty at the University of Southern Denmark and adjunct faculty at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Technical University Berlin. Furthermore, he has advised, inter alia, European governments and businesses on EU and German investment screening regulations as well as in international investment disputes and international organisations, such as UNCTAD, on matters of reform of the current international investment law regime. He was repeatedly invited by the European Parliament’s INTA Committee to prepare studies on the evolvement of the EU Common Commercial Policy in the area of investment. Steffen is series co-editor of the YSEC Yearbook of Socio-Economic Constitutions, Springer. Further publications here. Steffen initiated CELIS in 2019 and is one of the directors of the CELIS Institute.

Objective

In the context of a predicted “dramatic fall of FDI” and “economic and geopolitical uncertainty” several countries within the EU and elsewhere intensified the screening of foreign investment in a hasty effort to safeguard domestic capacities relating to health care and protect strategic interests. As the domino effect on tightening screening regulations rendered a FDI policy-norm worldwide, protectionism started brewing in the investment climate.

This conference will address the concerns as regards lack of legal certainty in implications of FDI Screening under the grounds of “national security”, “strategic interests”, “critical infrastructure”, “public order” and concepts of the like. It will help practicioners and scholars to understand or delimit the wide understanding of these concepts/grounds of FDI screening and discuss the central question of what should be the approach towards understanding these concepts when used as parameters to screen inbound FDI.

Final Programme