In a quiet but consequential moment for European economic governance, Belgium's Interfederal Screening Committee issued its first-ever public prohibition in August 2026, blocking a Chinese-controlled firm from acquiring NHV Group — a helicopter operator whose reach into North Sea energy logistics and military maintenance placed it at the intersection of civilian and defense security. The decision, three years in the making as a regulatory possibility, arrives not as a protectionist turn but as a precise application of a mechanism that has otherwise approved the vast majority of foreign investm