The Spanish Government calmly faces the final stretch of the negotiations of the European package of measures to deal with the rise in gas and electricity prices: the draft of the agreement that the Council of European Energy Ministers will seal in Brussels on Friday will not force a change the structure of the tax on companies in the sector in which the executive has been working since last July, according to Spanish diplomatic sources.
Although Brussels always expressed its willingness to validate national measures that responded to the same objectives, the starting points were divergent. While the Commission's original proposal provided for limiting the extraordinary profits obtained by companies that produce electricity from renewable sources or nuclear energy based on "the excess of taxable profit" obtained in 2022, understood as those that are 20% higher than those entered in the three previous fiscal years, and claim a "solidarity contribution" similar to oil and gas companies, in Spain the Government proposes a tax on their turnover.
For the sake of agreement, the Czech presidency of the European Union, which intends to close the political agreement on this and other measures at Friday's meeting, the Czech presidency has presented a compromise proposal that adjusts the definition of the tax so that all countries that have adopted or plan to legislate in this regard do not have to alter their plans. The latest documents presented to the Governments include “compatibility guarantees” that were not included in the Commission's original proposal and that extend to other aspects of the package of measures.
Thus, although it will be mandatory to reduce total electricity consumption by 10% so that half of this reduction occurs at peak hours, the way of defining them and counting the savings has also been made more flexible to take into account the characteristics of each electricity market and initiatives taken in recent months in the same direction. Waiting to see the final document that this afternoon will be presented to the ambassadors of the Twenty-seven, the Spanish delegation also trusts that the final agreement on this point recognizes the Spanish demands for flexibility. “We hope to leave the meeting with our model basically intact”, affirm Spanish diplomatic sources.
