By Edith Hancock
The European Union opened an in-depth foreign subsidies investigation into China's Nuctech, saying the company might have been granted funding that distorts the bloc's market.
The European Commission said Thursday that China's subsidies for Nuctech--which it said might have included grants, preferential tax measures and loans--could have improved its competitive position in Europe at the expense of competitors in the threat-detection-systems sector. Nuctech's controlling shareholder is a unit of the China National Nuclear Corporation, a state-run builder and operator of nuclear power plants.
The commission--the bloc's executive arm--first started investigating the company in April last year and carried out unannounced inspections at its premises in Poland and the Netherlands. The watchdog said that Nuctech might have made offers in public tenders that couldn't be reasonably matched by its rivals in threat detection.
It is the latest probe opened under the EU's Foreign Subsidies Regulation, a law that came into force in 2023 and empowers the commission to scrutinize companies that receive what it suspects to be unfair investment from foreign governments.
"We will continue cooperating with the Commission to ensure that the facts are assessed accurately and in an unbiased manner," a company spokesperson said.
Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
By Edith Hancock
The European Union opened an in-depth foreign subsidies investigation into China's Nuctech, saying the company might have been granted funding that distorts the bloc's market.
The European Commission said Thursday that China's subsidies for Nuctech--which it said might have included grants, preferential tax measures and loans--could have improved its competitive position in Europe at the expense of competitors in the threat-detection-systems sector. Nuctech's controlling shareholder is a unit of the China National Nuclear Corporation, a state-run builder and operator of nuclear power plants.
The commission--the bloc's executive arm--first started investigating the company in April last year and carried out unannounced inspections at its premises in Poland and the Netherlands. The watchdog said that Nuctech might have made offers in public tenders that couldn't be reasonably matched by its rivals in threat detection.
It is the latest probe opened under the EU's Foreign Subsidies Regulation, a law that came into force in 2023 and empowers the commission to scrutinize companies that receive what it suspects to be unfair investment from foreign governments.
"We will continue cooperating with the Commission to ensure that the facts are assessed accurately and in an unbiased manner," a company spokesperson said.
The in-depth probe comes as the EU has ramped up scrutiny of Chinese firms' European presence in recent months. The Dublin office of e-commerce group Temu--owned by China's PDD Holdings--was raided by commission officials earlier this month under the bloc's foreign subsidies rules, according to a person familiar with the matter.
A spokesperson for the commission said the regulator carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of a company involved in e-commerce but did not name the entity. Temu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The commission last month also opened an in-depth probe into Chinese state-owned rolling stock manufacturer CRRC over a public tender for light rail vehicles in Portugal.
Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 11, 2025 12:00 ET (17:00 GMT)
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