Minimum requirements
Article 4
1. Rules and procedures related to screening shall be transparent and shall not discriminate between third countries or between the Member States. 2. For foreign investments that fall within the scope of their screening mechanism and that are subject to a filing requirement, Member States shall ensure that adequate procedures and resources are provided for the screening authority to: (a) carry out an initial review of a foreign investment within 45 calendar days of the filing to decide whether an in-depth investigation is necessary to determine if a foreign investment is likely to negatively affect security or public order; and (b) based on the results of the initial review, carry out, where necessary, an in-depth investigation to determine whether that foreign investment is likely to negatively affect security or public order; 3. Member States shall ensure that their screening authorities monitor and ensure compliance with their screening mechanism and screening decisions, in particular by identifying, preventing and addressing their circumvention, and are provided with sufficient resources to carry out those tasks. 4. Member States shall ensure that their screening authorities are empowered to screen and adopt a screening decision on foreign investments falling within the scope of the respective Member State’s screening mechanism and not subject to a prior authorisation requirement on their own initiative for at least 15 months and up to a maximum of five years, after the completion of that foreign investment where the screening authority has grounds to consider that such foreign investment may affect security or public order. 5. Member States shall ensure that their screening authorities are empowered, for at least 24 months after the completion of a foreign investment, to screen and adopt a screening decision on that foreign investment provided that it is subject to a prior authorisation requirement and was not filed or was filed after its completion. 6. Confidential information made available to a host Member State for the purposes of screening shall be protected. Member States shall ensure that their screening authorities provide entities making information available with the opportunity to indicate the information they consider to be confidential. 7. Member States shall ensure that the parties subject to the screening decision have the right to seek an effective judicial remedy against that screening decision. 8. Each Member State shall ensure that an annual report is made public, and includes information on relevant legislative developments in that Member State and aggregated and anonymised data on the foreign investments screened, including the outcome of screening decisions, nationalities, or countries of establishment, as applicable, of parties to the foreign investments notified to the screening authority, and the economic sectors in which those transactions took place, with the exception of data for which full anonymisation is not possible. 9. Member States shall ensure that a foreign investment subject to a prior authorisation requirement as referred to in paragraph 15 is filed by the applicant requesting an authorisation with the screening authority and is screened before the foreign investment is completed. 10. Member States shall ensure that their screening authorities, where applicable and without undue delay, inform the person who made the filing of the completeness of that filing. 11. Member States shall ensure that their screening authorities are empowered to impose effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties on foreign investors that fail to comply with the requirements of the screening mechanism, including failure to file the foreign investment where required or failure to comply with mitigating measures. 12. Member States’ screening authorities and the Commission shall make publicly available the contact details through which stakeholders may submit information concerning foreign investments in a confidential manner. 13. Adequate procedures shall be provided for the notification of foreign investments through the cooperation mechanism pursuant to Article 5. 14. Before adopting a decision to authorise a foreign investment subject to mitigating measures or to prohibit or unwind a foreign investment, the screening authority shall give the parties subject to the intended screening decision the opportunity to make their views known effectively. 15. Each Member State shall ensure that its screening mechanism imposes a prior authorisation requirement for foreign investments where the Union target established in its territory: (a) develops, produces or commercialises items listed in Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2021/821; (b) develops, produces or commercialises goods or technology listed in the Annex to Directive 2009/43/EC; (c) produces, conducts research in or develops semiconductor or quantum technologies referred to in Annex I to this Regulation, or conducts research in or develops artificial intelligence technologies referred to in that Annex; (d) is active in the transport, energy or digital infrastructure sectors and is considered critical pursuant to a risk-based targeted assessment that takes into account national security and vital societal functions in light of the essential services provided by that Union target and that is performed by the Member State in which that Union target is established; (e) exercises, as regards any strategic raw materials listed in Section I of Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2024/1252, activities of exploration, extraction, processing, recycling or recovery as defined in Article 2 of that Regulation, or of stockpiling; (f) constitutes one of the following entities: (i) a central counterparty, namely a ‘CCP’ as defined in Article 2, point (1), of Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 38 ) ; (ii) a central securities depository, as defined in Article 2(1), point (1), of Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 39 ) ; (iii) an operator of regulated markets, within the meaning of Article 4(1), point (18), and Article 4(1), point (21), of Directive 2014/65/EU; (iv) an operator of payment systems, withing the meaning of Article 2, point (a), of Directive 98/26/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 40 ) , and designated as such pursuant to Article 10(1) of that Directive, with the exclusion of payment systems operated by central banks; (v) any other systemically important institution within the meaning of Article 131(3) of Directive 2013/36/EU; (vi) a global provider of specialised financial messaging services; or (g) owns, develops or operates voter registration databases, voting systems and other information systems specifically designed to manage electoral operations such as the counting, auditing, and displaying of election results, and post-election reporting to certify and validate results. 16. Member States may decide to apply the screening mechanism to foreign investments falling within the scope of this Regulation other than those referred to in paragraph 15. Where Member States decide to apply the screening mechanism to such foreign investments, this Regulation shall apply to the screening of those foreign investments. 17. Paragraph 15 does not apply to greenfield investments.