Study On The Screening Mechanisms For Foreign Direct Investments Into The EU

The European Parliament officially promulgated Establishing a Framework for the Screening of Foreign Direct Investments into the EU,on October 11 2020.Chinese scholars are accustomed to translating and abbreviating it as“Foreign Direct Investments into the EU”,which exchange the status quo and establish the rules for the security review of foreign direct investment between the EU and member states,tending to a unified paradigm.In view of the many issues that need to be further clarified,such as the Regulation itself and its impact on China,this article will discuss the following aspects.The first part of the thesis will give an overview of the review mechanism.This chapter firstly sorts out the theoretical basis of the national security review of foreign direct investment,and takes the three levels of conceptual analysis,legal basis and value evaluation as the starting point of the research.Secondly,the chapter explores the background of the EU legislation,and discusses the different roles of China,member states represented by France and Germany,and other developed countries in the introduction of this Regulation.The chapter concludes with a focus on the legal basis of the Regulation,exploring two perspectives on common commercial policy and free flow of capital.The second part of the thesis sorts out the main content of the EU review mechanism in detail and makes a comment.The review mechanism of the Regulation mainly includes four levels,namely: the basic review power of Member States and the auxiliary review power of the European Commission;as well as the static review standard clauses and the dynamic cooperation procedure provisions,the former involving security or public order and funding sources,the latter involving information sharing,two different types of applicable procedures,and cooperative organizational guarantees.The second section of this chapter provides an overall understanding of this Regulation on from both positive and negative perspectives.After interpreting the specific content of the review mechanism of this Regulation,the third chapter of the thesis studies its challenges to China.Because no matter from the background or main content of the Regulation,China is the first to be among them.These challenges mainly include: First,the establishment of the dual review mechanism not only indicates a change in attitude towards my country,but also will make Chinese investors face more and more complex scrutiny;secondly,the unclear definition of“security or public order” has resulted in ambiguous and abusive review standards,while the focus on the source and country of investors has made Chinese companies,especially state-owned enterprises,face more challenges.Unfavorable investment public opinion;thirdly,the cooperation procedures increase the cost of information processing on the one hand,and delay the access time on the other hand;fourth,the lack of remedies for review decisions in the Regulation harms the rights and interests of investors.The last part of the thesis proposes targeted solutions to the above challenges.First,it is necessary to strictly define the review standards and clarify the content of the review.On the one hand,it is necessary to define security or public order from two levels,and on the other hand,it is necessary to guide state-owned enterprises to participate in global investment fairly;Third,the content of the China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement also responds to the above challenges to a certain extent,especially in terms of market access standards,regulation and protection of Chinese enterprises and it provides three levels of opportunity to establish the accountability system for review decisions.Therefore,continuous and in-depth promotion of the implementation of investment agreements will also become an effective solution.