DÜSSELDORF, Germany — Ceconomy, the German retail group that owns MediaMarkt and Saturn, said on Friday that the most delicate approval for its sale to JD.com was still unresolved, raising fresh doubts about whether the Chinese company can complete one of its most important European acquisitions on schedule.

The company said it remained uncertain “whether, or when,” Austrian authorities would grant foreign-investment clearance, even as the two sides continued talks with Vienna to satisfy the conditions for approval.

The delay has turned Austria into the principal obstacle to a deal that, until now, had appeared to be moving through Europe’s regulatory machinery with only manageable friction. Ceconomy said merger-control approvals had already been secured in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Turkey, while foreign-investment clearances had been obtained in France and Italy. The company added that approvals in Germany and Spain were still pending on the investment-screening side, though it expected them “promptly.”

JD.com, which agreed in July 2025 to buy Ceconomy for €4.60 a share, has framed the transaction as a long-term bet on European retail rather than a purely financial acquisition. In a statement carried by current coverage, the company pointed to commitments on store locations, jobs, data protection and managerial independence, and said it had offered Austrian authorities additional measures beyond those pledges. “JD.com firmly believes in this partnership for European retail,” the company said, adding that it would keep working toward closing the transaction.

Why Austria matters

Austria’s review is not, on paper, about market competition. It is about state scrutiny of foreign acquisitions by investors from outside the European Union, the European Economic Area and Switzerland when a transaction may affect security or public order. Under Austria’s Investment Control Act, reviews can be triggered in sectors considered sensitive, and the government can approve deals, impose conditions or refuse authorization if safeguards are judged insufficient.

That legal framework helps explain why the Austrian process has become more consequential than a conventional antitrust filing. Ceconomy operates about 50 MediaMarkt stores in Austria, giving the government a direct stake in how ownership, data handling and operational control would be structured after the deal. Austria’s ministry says the law is designed to keep the country open to investment while protecting companies of “special importance for security and public order.”

The broader European context also points to why regulators are scrutinizing the takeover so closely. Italy approved the transaction only with strict conditions tied to personal data, with a government decree, reported by Reuters, saying that Ceconomy’s holdings of Italian customer information could pose a significant security risk if not tightly ring-fenced. The decree said JD.com had pledged to keep those data in European warehouses, and it noted that Austria had sought clarification from Italy during the process.

A European test case for Chinese investment

The Austrian standoff arrives as JD.com expands aggressively in Europe. Earlier this month, the company launched its Joybuy marketplace in six European countries, including Germany and France, part of a broader push to build logistics, delivery and retail scale on the continent. Analysts cited by Reuters described the Ceconomy acquisition as strategically more significant than a marketplace launch because it would give JD.com an established customer base and a large physical footprint through MediaMarkt and Saturn.

That is one reason the Ceconomy deal is being watched well beyond Austria. It sits at the intersection of three currents shaping Europe’s economic policy: tougher foreign-investment screening, greater concern over consumer data and critical retail infrastructure, and a more openly strategic view of industrial and digital sovereignty. Recent policy analysis has noted that European regulators are increasingly blending competition, security and industrial-policy concerns rather than treating them as separate questions.

Germany, too, has treated the acquisition as more than a routine transaction. In January, the German government confirmed that it had opened an investment-review procedure into JD.com’s planned purchase of Ceconomy, saying the test was whether the acquisition could impair the public order or security of Germany or another E.U. member state.

What happens next

For now, the transaction is not dead. But it is no longer merely a matter of ticking off procedural approvals. Austria has become the venue in which Europe’s unease over strategic dependence, customer data and foreign control is being distilled into a single yes-or-no decision. If Vienna ultimately demands remedies that JD.com finds too onerous — or refuses to clear the deal outright — the company’s most ambitious retail acquisition in Europe could be delayed further or reshaped altogether.