Hello there, welcome back. It's great to see you again. This is the MLEX podcast, your home of

regulatory affairs. Every week we chat with members of our team of reporters as they roam the corridors of power in the world's capitals. I'm your host, James Panicki, senior editor with Emlex's Asia Bureau, coming to you from the Lexus Nexus offices in Melbourne, Australia. It's great to be in your feed midweek this time for an additional installment ahead of the Northern Hemisphere's summer break.

And we return to Europe for what has become a favourite topic of this podcast, state subsidies.

However, we're coming into the discussion from the perspective of a new power that has been awarded to the European Commission, a power to police

subsidies that are handed out by foreign governments. What does that mean? Well, when an EU-based

company is competing against a foreign company for, say, a tender, if the foreign company

has benefited from state subsidies, that will be taken into account.

Now, on paper, this makes perfect sense.

It's all about achieving a level playing field.

But in practice, working out what subsidies a company may have benefited from could prove

to be an uphill battle.

Our Brussels team has been grappling with this very issue for some time now,

and two members of that team join us today.

Natalie McNeilis is a senior reporter covering M&A.

Lewis Crofts is our editor at large.

Natalie, starting from you, firstly tell us all about what the FSR, so the foreign subsidies

regulation, is all about.

Hello, James.

Thanks very much for having me.

I would like to give you just a little bit of background.

I think it's good to go back and think about where did this whole foreign subsidies

regulation come from?

...