Article: Report on the CELIS Forum on Investment Screening

Abstract

On 1–3 June 2022, the Common European Law on Investment Screening (CELIS) Institute organized its fourth annual conference ‘2022 CELIS Forum on Investment Screening’ (CFIS22). The Conference was held in Sweden, at Uppsala University. The CELIS Institute is an independent non-profit, non-partisan research enterprise dedicated to promoting better regulation of foreign investments in the context of security, public order, and competitiveness. It was set up in 2020 by Steffen Hindelang and J. Hillebrand Pohl, the convenors of this year’s conference, as a permanent successor to the ‘International Conference on a Common European Law on Investment Screening (CELIS)’, convened by Professor Hindelang and Andreas Moberg in 2019. The aim of CFIS 22 was to debate European investment screening on national security grounds from a strategic perspective on the theme ‘The Emerging Law of Investment Control in Europe: Screening, Sanctions and Subsidies’. CFIS was a major event which brought together, not just leading academic scholars, EU officials, national experts, diplomats, and policymakers, but also business leaders, think tankers, and representatives of the investment community and civil society, as well as the media from across Europe and beyond. The three-day event was generously funded by Riksbankens jubileumsfond, the Center for International Private Enterprise, the Swedish Institute of International Law, Datenna, Blomstein, and the Institute for Democracy Societas investment screening, foreign investments, CELIS, FDI, ESG, national security, public order, sovereign-driven investment.