At the 21st EU-China Summit on 9 April, both sides hailed a new era in the trade relationship. Increasingly confident of its domestic technological capabilities, China will soon no longer oblige foreign companies active in China to share their tech know-how. And a new Foreign Investment Law in China allows for greater inward investment to the country, but maintains restrictions and scrutiny mechanisms on 48 sectors of key strategic interest (the “negative list”), including the energy sector. In the EU, there is no such coordinated approach to inward investments in energy. Scrutiny of foreign investments in energy is left to the discretion of Member States and is often not done at all. According to Joe Mitton, recent events laid that fracture in EU policy bare.
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