Great Britain protests against Spain for reducing the use of renewable energy sources.

British justice has begun the process of seizing Spain's assets to enforce one of the most well-known rulings regarding cuts to renewable energy subsidies. This concerns the case of the French fund Antin, which sold its rights in this dispute and received compensation of 120 million euros for the consequences of the 2013 energy reform.

The High Court of London has issued a temporary ruling to seize a historic building owned by the Spanish state in the capital of the United Kingdom - the Vicente Cañada Blanch Spanish Institute, an international school located in a former Dominican monastery over a century old, according to a resolution dated August 2, obtained by the publication CincoDías.

This educational institution is not the only one against which a seizure order has been issued in London. The same court has already issued a seizure order for part of the 850 million euros in compensation that the insurance company of the Greek oil tanker Prestige must pay for its wreck off the Galician coast in 2002.

In addition, the Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction in May regarding the Cervantes Institute in central London, following a ruling in favor of another investor in the renewable energy sector, Blasket Renewable Investments (the Infrared case), which was granted the right to receive compensation of 28.2 million euros.

Renunciation of sovereignty

The decision to allow the arrest, announced on Friday, followed after Judge Peter Fraser of the same London court rejected Spain's request in May, based on its sovereignty, to overturn the ruling of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) - an agency under the World Bank - made in 2018 in favor of the owners involved in the dispute.

In fact, this latest ruling is also not final, as the Supreme Court gives Spain, represented by the State Attorney's Office, two months to file a request for "modification or annulment of this order," which was made without the opportunity to present objections, the court acknowledged.

The final decision on the arrest will be made at a hearing conducted by the Commercial Court "no earlier than 21 days after notification of the order" and "no earlier than 21 days after the deadline" given to Spain to contest this decision, explained the Supreme Court of London.

Since 2021

Spain has not paid any of the rulings made in favor of affected investors due to cuts in renewable energy subsidies. The state attorney's office claims that the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) restricts investment arbitrations when both parties reside in the European area, and that the European Commission must authorize such payments by verifying that they do not constitute "illegal state aid."

In the case of Antin, the procedures for blocking the accounts and assets of the Spanish state abroad to preserve them for the corresponding million-euro compensation began in 2021 after the decision of the London Supreme Court, which upheld the ruling of the ICSID, obliging the Spanish state to pay more than 120 million euros plus interest to the funds that acquired Antin's rights.

The Antin Fund no longer has any connection to this dispute, although in June it once again expressed its intention to invest in Spanish land and, through the vehicle GCE BidCo, proposed to acquire the entire capital of the independent renewable energy producer Opdenergy Holding.

With this mandatory ruling, the solution's owners approached various international courts to enforce the arbitration decision. One of them is the High Court of Australia, which also rejected the arguments of Spanish lawyers regarding sovereignty to avoid compensation payments for the reduction of subsidies for renewable energy and gave the green light for other possible seizures.