Brussels complicates a source of income with which the new coalition government intends to finance its investiture program. The European Commission has submitted an assessment report on the “solidarity contribution and equivalent measures enacted” in the energy sector and concludes that there are no longer the “fallen from heaven benefits” that motivated extraordinary fiscal measures.
The General Directorate of Taxation of the Commission, author of the report, reviews what has happened since October 2022 when the EU, with the support of the Spanish Government, approved a community regulation that allowed imposing “a solidarity contribution by fossil fuel companies ». It thus covered the so-called special temporary tax on energy companies with the aim of raising more than one billion euros per year.
According to the European Commission report, the panorama is no longer that of autumn a year ago. “A look at the evolution of fossil energy markets shows that the situation is very different from what existed when the Council Regulation came into force in October 2022,” they tell the governments of the European Council..
«Declining energy prices throughout 2023 and a more uncertain economic environment, as well as rising capital costs, have led companies in the oil, gas and coal sectors to record a decrease in their profits compared to the extraordinary surplus profits of 2022,” he adds.
This report can provide legal arguments to the sector to neutralize the coalition government's objective of perpetuating the so-called temporary tax. According to the Commission's report, the Government is not being able to collect what was planned anyway. He points out that in 2022 he aspired to collect 1,245 million and that it has remained at 1,089, about 156 million less. With these figures, it places Spain as the third country with the most revenue, below Italy and Poland.
REPSOL, TO COUNTRIES WITHOUT TAXES
Meanwhile, the president of Repsol, Antonio Brufau, insisted this Thursday on the group's warning not only to paralyze investments, but to take them to other countries with lower tax rates.. He raised the oil company's warning to transfer key investments for the country's energy transition due to legal uncertainty. In a speech at the University of Navarra, he extended to France the possibility of taking investments planned by Repsol in Spain. It has focused on 1,500 million planned for hydrogen projects, although this newspaper has already published that the investments under review reach 3,000 million.
According to the transcript provided by the company and this newspaper, Brufau was clear when addressing the audience: «All this investment that we have in Repsol planned in the field of hydrogen is not going to be less than 1,500 million euros, which are subject to one thing. , a thing called, and you will understand it very well, stability. Legal stability, fiscal stability». “If we have to have a tax that the French or the Portuguese do not have to produce hydrogen, then surely our decision will be to go to Portugal or France,” he said.
He therefore mentioned two neighboring countries, which, according to the aforementioned community report, have barely tightened taxation on the sector, taking advantage of the European regulation.. From France it mentions that it has barely raised an extra 67 million (not even 10% of Spain's figures) and Portugal, nothing.
For Brufau, “it is incomprehensible, for example, that in Spain they want to maintain a temporary tax based on hypothetical extraordinary profits when said tax has already disappeared in all the countries around us.. The costs to which the Government subjects its companies places them at a clear competitive disadvantage,” he protested.