The regional court of Essen, Germany, has dismissed a legal action brought by the Kingdom of Spain, which demanded that the electricity company RWE refrain from recognizing or executing the arbitration award issued against Spain by the International Center for Settlement of Relative Disputes to Investments (ICSID).
The German court recognizes the right of the electric company RWE to raise the conflict before international arbitration where it considers it may be more favorable, in this case in the jurisdiction of the United States, and highlights that it has not found evidence of illegal behavior by part of the company as Spain had denounced.
This is the second attempt by the State's lawyers to stop the execution of the award issued by the ICSID in favor of RWE, in which it condemned Spain to pay 28 million euros to compensate for the impact of the cancellation of investment premiums. renewables that took place in the country during the first government of Mariano Rajoy.
RWE had invested in the last decade of the last century in Spain to launch hydroelectric plants and wind farms with the support of some succulent public incentives that the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero approved at the time. In December 2014, after the cancellation of this aid, RWE denounced the country to the ICSID, which did not rule until 2019. At that time, compensation for the company's seven renewable energy plants that saw their financial conditions altered as a result of the retroactive withdrawal of renewable premiums. The sentence imposed on Spain a payment of 28 million euros to the Teutonic company.
Spain, in its policy of not recognizing the claims on this issue, has already tried to stop the application of this award in an action similar to this one before the World Bank, which has also been dismissed in this last month.
On this occasion, the Spanish State's legal profession has tried to demonstrate before the German court that since RWE is a company belonging to the European single market, the place to settle any dispute regarding its investments must be within the framework of European justice. Furthermore, the Spanish State requested a declaration of illegality of the measures adopted by RWE before the international court because it violated the Energy Charter Treaty.
Spain already has 26 sentences imposed worth 1,800 million euros in compensation, costs, lawyers' and consultants' fees, and late payment interest. Last August, a British judge already agreed to seize several assets of the Spanish State in its territory as a measure for the plaintiff companies to collect the compensation that Spain refuses to pay. Sources familiar with the legal actions in the US assure that the situation could be repeated on the other side of the Atlantic, since the legal teams of the energy companies are tracking possible assets that can be seized in that country.
