Brussels Court Voids Spain Renewable Subsidy Award Seizure of €75.759M

Blasket is the legal heir of the RREEF Jersey and RREEF Luxembourg funds, which won an award at the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) after Spain trimmed renewable premiums. The court held that collecting the compensation by force would violate EU law, citing the Court of Justice of the EU's Achmea, Komstroy and Micula rulings on investor-state arbitration inside the bloc, the reports say. It described the attempt to enforce in the name of the British entity RREEF Jersey alone as a legal fiction, since the claim also belongs to RREEF Luxembourg.

The court also followed the European Commission, which took part in the case as amicus curiae. Paying such awards without Brussels' approval would breach EU state-aid rules, the ruling says, and it concludes that no enforcement to collect Spain's debt can proceed in Belgium until the Commission takes a final decision.

Why it matters for energy investors

For renewable developers and funds holding awards against EU states, the decision narrows one of the main routes for collecting: seizing a state company's cash flows in an EU jurisdiction. A Belgian court has now sided with the Commission's state-aid argument rather than the ICSID Convention's enforcement rules, which the court acknowledged make awards enforceable in principle.

The €75.759 million had been held as consigned funds, according to the agency report carried by Pressdigital, so the order releases money that was tied up while the case ran. The ruling does not cancel the underlying award, and it applies to Belgium only.

What is not confirmed yet

The full text of the judgment was not available to Voltgrid, and the account above rests on Spanish press reports of it. No report found by October 23 says whether Blasket will appeal. The timing and content of the Commission's final decision on the awards, which the court treats as the pending trigger, have not been stated. Investors are also pursuing enforcement in other jurisdictions, and those courts are not bound by the Belgian ruling.