Unpacking the Determinants of Investment Screening Mechanisms Across the EU Member States

While the European Union (EU) remains committed to the free movement of capital, the proliferation of investment screening mechanisms (ISMs) reflects a growing prioritization of national security. At first glance, this proliferation suggests convergence. Yet beneath this surface, EU member states have designed these mechanisms in markedly different ways. This dissertation explains what drives that variation by focusing on two core institutional dimensions of ISM design: scope, defined as the sectors subject to review, and threshold, defined as the ownership level that triggers scrutiny. Drawing on the PRISM dataset (Bauerle Danzman & Meunier, 2023a), it cross-tabulates scope (broad/narrow) and threshold (high/low) to develop a fourfold typology: wide-selective, restrictive, tolerant, and deep-selective. It explains this variation through two domestic factors: technological intensity and public bank ownership. Countries with high technological intensity are more likely to adopt broad-scope ISMs to manage diffuse, cross-sectoral vulnerabilities, whereas countries with lower technological intensity tend to adopt more targeted, narrow-scope regimes. Regarding threshold, countries with strong public banking capacity are more likely to adopt higher thresholds, as public banks serve both as financial backstops against hostile takeovers and as promoters of domestic industrial resilience, reducing the need for more restrictive, low-threshold screening. These arguments are tested through a factor-centric comparative case study of Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic, combining a plausibility probe with process tracing. In doing so, the dissertation makes three contributions: it develops a novel ISM typology that accommodates hybrid institutional forms, advances a domestic political economy explanation linking technological intensity and public banking capacity to variation in ISM design, and bridges the literatures on financial statecraft and investment screening by extending public banks' role beyond development and industrial policy.