France: Inward/ Foreign Investment

France's updated military programming law adds €36 billion to defence spending through 2030, creating significant investment opportunities in munitions, drones, space, AI, and electronic warfare systems. However, US and non-EU investors face complex regulatory hurdles including French foreign investment screening, European eligibility requirements, export controls, and ITAR-free design mandates that fundamentally reshape how transatlantic defence investments must be structured.

Every few months, I find myself in a familiar conversation with a foreign investor who is approaching a French transaction for the first time. They have done cross-border deals before, and have done their research. They usually arrive with a version of the same assumption: that France is more complicated than it needs to be, that the regulatory environment is from a different era, and that with the right advisors, the complexity can be “figured out.”

France has reformed its foreign direct investment regime, broadening the scope of the 10% voting-rights threshold to capture French entities listed on nearly all regulated markets worldwide. The changes, effective August 17, 2026, extend FDI notification requirements to include major third-country exchanges through EU equivalence decisions and six specifically named markets, significantly expanding the reach of French investment screening for non-European investors.

Le 7ème Sommet Choose France, qui a eu lieu le 13 mai 2024, a réuni près de 200 chefs d'entreprise étrangers de 40 nationalités différentes.

La France présente de nombreux atouts pour les entreprises grâce notamment à sa place centrale en Europe qui est le 2e marché le plus vaste du monde.

France offers many advantages for businesses, in particular thanks to its central location in Europe, the 2nd largest market in the world.

Dans le contexte de l'épidémie de Covid-19 et de ses effets sur l'économie de l'Union Européenne, la commission européenne a publié le 26 mars 2020 une communication destinée à alerter les Etats membres sur la nécessité ...

In the context of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the European Union's economy, the European Commission published on March 26, 2020 a communication designed to alert Member States to the need to protect ...

The European Commission recently issued COVID-19-related guidance (see Jones Day Alert, March 2020), ahead of the entry into force of the new EU FDI screening mechanism in October 2020. Several member states have been tightening ...