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Romain Girard

Romain Girard advises multinational corporations and institutions on complex antitrust and foreign direct investment (FDI) regulatory matters. The Legal 500 UK recognizes Romain in the EU and Competition category, describing him as “helpful, knowledgeable and personable” and “his legal knowledge is spot on – in particular, his awareness of legal developments in key jurisdictions across the world is very useful."

Romain has extensive experience advising clients on all aspects of EU, UK and international antitrust and FDI matters and representing them before the European Commission, as well as UK competition authorities and courts. His practice covers multiple industries including financial institutions and private equity, telecommunications media and technology, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, aerospace, metals and mining, automotive, defense, and life sciences.

Romain’s practice also covers international trade and EU/UK sanctions, with extensive experience navigating the complexities of these highly dynamic regimes both defensively (i.e. advising on third party audits and lawsuit), and offensively (advising on voluntary disclosures and complaints).

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On 15 January 2025, the European Commission recommended that EU Member States review outbound investment in three critical technologies—semiconductors, AI, and quantum—with the aim of potentially creating an EU–wide regime to regulate such investment. EU Member States should report to the Commission on their findings and risk assessment within 18 months. These findings would inform a future policy proposal, so any introduction of outbound investment rules in the EU is likely to be several years away.

How did we get here?

Outbound investment mechanisms aim to regulate domestic companies making outward investments of capital, expertise, and knowledge that could contribute to the ‘leakage’ of critical and sensitive  technologies to third countries. Outbound investments typically take the form of EU firms purchasing equity in non-EU entities (e.g.  through joint ventures, greenfield investments), but can also take place through less structured arrangements such as R&D cooperation or transfer of employees.

The focus on outbound investment screening has its roots in transatlantic cooperation on China policy, and specifically the desire to minimize Western technology leakage to China. In particular, the U.S. Treasury Department issued new regulation prohibiting or otherwise requiring disclosure of outbound investment—in semiconductors, AI, and quantum—in Chinese entities as well as entities in other jurisdictions that hold certain interests in Chinese companies. The regulations entered into force on 2 January 2025.

Within the EU, outbound investment control was put on agenda with the European Economic Security Strategy and a subsequent white paper on outbound investment. Before then, only a few EU countries, such as Austria and Spain would screen outbound investment, and there had been no EU-wide approach on this topic.

What does it mean?

EU Member States are requested to monitor outbound investments in three critical technologies: semiconductors, AI, and quantum. The original white paper proposal also named biotechnologies amongst suggested critical technologies to be covered by the review, but this has been dropped in the new recommendation. The recommended scope of the monitoring exercise is as follows:Continue Reading Toward EU Outbound Investment Regulation