Foreign direct investment screening in CEE & SEE

Foreign direct investment (FDI) screening divergence in Europe is likely to remain a key hurdle for cross-border M&A, despite efforts aimed at introducing a minimum level of harmonisation of national screening laws across the EU and ensuring procedural improvements to the EU cooperation mechanism.

Our quick reference guide is designed for investors and advisors entering the markets of the CEE & SEE jurisdictions we cover, to assist them with local or international transactions and setting up or expanding businesses in the region. We cover 13 jurisdictions in CEE & SEE, seven of which have already implemented multi-sector investment screening (Austria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia). Two more jurisdictions are soon to go live (in Bulgaria, there is still one set of guidelines to be published before filings become mandatory and in Croatia, the long awaited FDI law is to be adopted in 2025). Ukraine and the Balkan jurisdictions we cover (Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania) have not yet implemented general multi-sector FDI vetting regimes but operate sector-specific authorisations.

Covered Topics include key questions such as:

• What are the investor profiles and the target sectors within the scope?
• What kind of transactions trigger a filing obligation (thresholds in M&A transactions, greenfield, intragroup, exemptions)?
• What are the filing and review deadlines?
• Will the transaction become public following submission of the filing?
• Are there specific call-in powers to take into account?