French Foreign Investment Control Following the Pacte Law

France recently passed new legislation to strengthen French foreign investment control. Following a November 2018 decree that expanded the scope of the control to new sensitive areas — including R&D activities in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, robotics and semiconductors — France enacted the PACTE Law, in May 2019, which grants new remedial powers to the Minister of the Economy, in order to enforce compliance by investors with French foreign investment rules and national security commitments. The law also introduces new transparency rules and provides the French parliament with new prerogatives to monitor the French government’s actions regarding foreign investment control and economic security matters.