On 17 June 2026 the European Parliament and the Council adopted Regulation (EU) 2026/1386 on the screening of foreign investments in the Union, published in the Official Journal on 26 June and in force since 16 July. Its principal substantive and procedural provisions apply from 17 January 2028. The scale of the administrative machinery it will govern is already visible in the record of the system it replaces: in 2024 national authorities handled 3,136 requests for authorisation and ex officio cases, of which 41 per cent were formally screened, while 477 investments were notified to the Union cooperation mechanism by 21 Member States, according to the Commission’s Fifth Annual Report on the screening of foreign direct investments into the Union. Against those two figures the new Regulation does something narrower than its framing suggests: it makes a screening mechanism compulsory in every Member State, fixes a common minimum perimeter of sensitive activities subject to prior authorisation and standstill, harmonises the initial review at forty-five calendar days, and brings within the Union framework investments made through European subsidiaries controlled by third-country investors. It does not create a European clearance, a single filing, a uniform control threshold or one transaction timetable. The unresolved question is therefore not whether Europe will screen more transactions, but whether a common duty to examine, exercised by twenty-seven authorities each retaining jurisdiction, procedure, conditions and the final decision, converges on anything a transaction party can plan against.
This report proceeds in nine steps. It first separates entry into force from date of application, and sets out the transitional rule under which the earlier framework continues to govern investments already screened or completed. It then traces the shift from an optional cooperation framework to a mandatory national mechanism, using the Commission’s Evaluation of Regulation (EU) 2019/452 and the European Court of Auditors’ Special Report 27/2023 as the diagnostic record. It examines which investments fall within the new perimeter, the defence and technology floor of Article 4(15), and the beneficial-ownership architecture. It then works four national regimes directly, from the official guidance of the Danish Business Authority, the Swedish Inspectorate of Strategic Products, the French Direction générale du Trésor and the Belgian SPF Économie. It closes on multi-country coordination, Union programmes and remedies, the approvals that screening does not replace, and a structural map for five transaction types. This report does not describe the twenty-seven national mechanisms, does not assess any company, and does not value any security.