MADRID — The Spanish government has won a significant victory in a long-running legal dispute with international investors over its decision more than a decade ago to scrap renewable energy subsidies. This week, a Belgian court overturned a ruling that ordered the Spanish government to pay investors nearly €76 million. It was a major win for Spain, which has been fighting attempts to freeze its assets around the world from clean energy investors who claim they are owed at least €2 billion in subsidies.
The dispute dates back to 2013, in the middle of the European debt crisis, when cash-strapped Spain, then under a new conservative government, decided to remove subsidies for renewable energy. Investors who had poured money into Spanish renewables said this was a breach, as they had invested on the understanding they would receive the subsidies. The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes ruled that Spain must pay the money, but the European Commission has told Spain doing so would constitute unlawful state aid.
The standoff has played out all over the world, with investors attempting to freeze Spanish assets in multiple jurisdictions. In June, U.S. investment fund Blasket Renewable Investments LLC issued subpoenas demanding documents from Adidas, Hilton Hotels, and other entities involved in Spain’s Football World Cup participation to help with its bid to freeze Spanish assets. In the end, the team went back home with its assets intact, along with the World Cup.
Spain also has cases going on in courts in Australia, Germany and the U.S. In 2023, a British court ordered an embargo on an international school in London owned by the Spanish state. The Belgian court’s original decision was one of the few examples where investors were successful, and the decision this week to overturn it will set a precedent for other challenges.
Spain’s defense persuaded a Belgian court to lift an embargo imposed in 2025 on state-owned air-navigation company Enaire for €75.76 million, according to documents seen by POLITICO. The case was also brought by Blasket, which bought the dispute from an investment fund called RREEF. The European Commission intervened in support of Spain.
RREEF, which was originally linked to Deutsche Bank, invested in Spanish wind and solar power under a 2007 regulatory framework that guaranteed subsidies for renewable energy. In 2013, amid the economic crisis, the government of then-Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, of the conservative People’s Party, cut those subsidies to reduce electricity costs. International investors turned to arbitration, arguing that the Energy Charter Treaty, an international agreement signed in the 1990s, guaranteed them fair and predictable treatment.
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