EU must prevent sensitive assets ‘ending up in the wrong hands’, warns Valdis Dombrovskis

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The EU must find ways of preventing its most sensitive technologies, companies and assets “ending up in the wrong hands”, a senior official said, as Brussels prepares to unveil measures to bolster its economic security.

The proposals are designed to help the bloc stay competitive in core industries such as software, chips and aircraft and reduce the potential for rival powers including China to control vital infrastructure in a time of global instability.

“We are facing a much more confrontational geopolitical landscape than we were facing some years or decades ago and we need correspondingly to see how we also are securing our national security interests,” Valdis Dombrovskis, the European trade commissioner, told the FT during the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The actions proposed would be “targeted . . . and proportionate”, he insisted, so that “this whole debate on economic security does not become a pretext for protectionism”.

Decisions on investment and export controls are in the hands of member states. But given rising trade tensions between the US and China along with Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine, putting pressure on eurozone economies, Brussels believes it needs to increasingly work as a bloc.

“We are certainly stronger if we act together,” Dombrovskis said. “Then we have the economic weight to be a major player on the world stage, whereas for individual member states it is often much more difficult.”

The European Economic Security Package, due to be published next week, will include legislative improvements to the EU’s regime for screening investments from outside the bloc. It will also set out ideas on scrutinising investments flowing out of the EU, coupled with proposals to add a “European dimension” to controls on sensitive technology exports.

One recent example concerns US pressure on the…