(Bloomberg) — A federal court for the District of Columbia authorized the enforcement of an arbitration award favoring one of the companies affected by Spain’s retroactive withdrawal of renewable premiums, according to a court document seen by Bloomberg.
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With the ruling filed Thursday, the claimants will be able to initiate proceedings for the recovery of pending payments through the seizure of Spanish commercial assets in the US and issue subpoenas against Spanish officials, Blasket Renewable Investments LLC — which bought the claims in a case first linked to Japan’s JGC Corp. — said in a release Friday.
Spain has been defending itself in courts since 2012 in legal tussles linked to how the country shifted the goalposts for investors drawn by a 2007 pledge to fund renewable energy projects. The country’s former People’s Party government after 2011 withdrew attractive terms to rein in a fiscal deficit.
Spain hasn’t paid amounts it owed for lost arbitration awards, leading some creditors to asked for the seizure or freezing of Spanish commercial assets or government-owned companies.
The ruling by the US court “doesn’t imply that it has the ability to enforce it and seize Spanish assets,” a spokesman for Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge said in a statement. “For that, there will need to be a new procedure in which Spain will be able to brandish opposing arguments,” he added.
While the original amounts for the cases amounted to €10.6 billion ($11.8 billion), the country has won €7.6 billion of the claims and lost €1.5 billion, the spokesman said. The Ministry has argued in the past that paying those awards could violate European Union law and be considered illegal State aid.
Teresa Ribera, the Spanish minister that dealt with the claims in recent years, was nominated earlier this month to lead the European Commission’s competition and climate portfolios.
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