Draft Investment Screening Act Would Recast German FDI Regime

A first draft of a German Investment Screening Act (Investitionsprüfungsgesetz, IPG) was circulated in early October 2026. The text is a so-called Referentenentwurf – a working draft prepared by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE).

The IPG would bring together screening rules currently spread across the Foreign Trade and Payments Act (AWG) and the Foreign Trade and Payments Ordinance (AWV) in a single statute. It would also implement the revised EU FDI Screening Regulation (EU) 2026/1386, whose minimum standards apply from 17 January 2028. In several areas, the draft goes beyond what the EU requires.

The government has not yet agreed on the text. Several provisions are expressly marked as subject to the outcome of consultations between the federal ministries (Ressortabstimmung). Once the ministries have aligned, the draft would normally be sent to the federal states and industry associations for comment, then adopted by the Federal Cabinet and submitted to