INVESTMENT SCREENING REGULATION

Publication date:March 12, 2019
Final text covers property: 1) land and real estate crucial for the use of critical infrastructure, and 2) farmland


The European Commission Report on FDI in the EU helps to get a handle on what is happening in general and for real estate: On the one hand, the traditional investors in the EU remain the same (U.S., Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Australia, Japan) and still hold 80% of all foreign-owned assets. On the other, Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates are rising quickly, and that is the reason for the Regulation. China went from € 2.5 to € 42 billion in six years, 60% of which was state-owned capital and 9% of that was real estate.

In the Commission Proposal for an Investment Screening Regulation, there was nothing property-specific. In the final Regulation as amended by Parliament and Council:

 

  • 'critical infrastructure'* now includes "land and real estate crucial for the use of such infrastructure" (Art. 4(a)); and

* energy, transport, water, health, communications, media, data processing or storage, aerospace, defence, electoral or financial infrastructure and sensitive facilities

  • 'supply of critical inputs' includes "food security" (Art. 4(c))

Full report under epf19-22 of 11.03.2019