European Union governments are striving to adopt a common approach to sensitive investments by non-European sovereign wealth funds, such as those of China, Russia and the oil-producing Gulf states, and may make an announcement to this effect as early as today at their Lisbon summit.

EU leaders have set aside time to discuss the state-backed funds, the largest of which control hundreds of billions of euros in assets, but will hold the discussion only if separate talks on the EU’s institutional reform treaty have been successfully wrapped up.