Securitization and foreign investment: Evaluation of fdi on national security grounds

Abstract

Foreign investment has increased steadily during the last decades. This fact has come accompanied by a change in some of its basic traits: its origin, its nature or its destination have also varied overtime. Today, when free trade and foreign investment are increasingly subject to criticisms in many places, the possibility for key sectors of the economy of the state to be controlled or owned by foreign investors, in many cases sovereign investors, is approached with prevention in many countries of the world. The limited —ex post— response provided by the international legal framework on investment forces states to explore new instruments to control foreign investment proposals that may endanger their national security due to its origin, nature or destination, among others.