The Council of Ministers approved yesterday a royal decree that develops the so-called antiope shield that was deployed with the covid pandemic to prevent the entry of foreign capital into companies considered strategic and that served, among other things, because Naturgy put a stop to the divestment of assets that his Géminis project envisioned. As explained by the Central Government, the regulations that were approved on Tuesday establish “clear, predictable and more legal certainty Spanish investment control regulations”.
The decision develops the national regulatory framework that changed with the introduction of Article 7 bis of Law 19/2003 in 2020, which suspended the liberalization regime for certain foreign direct investments in Spain, which are subject to prior authorization.
“The objective of the regulations is to adapt to the framework of the European Union and to give more transparency and confidence to the statistics of international investment in Spain”, assured the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Héctor Gómez.
The approved text specifies which types of foreign companies and which operations need or do not require an investment authorization from the administration. In addition, a series of exemptions to the prior authorization regime are established in line with what is established in the European framework.
The resolution period goes from the current six months to three months. In addition, the possibility of voluntary consultation is foreseen, binding for the administration and with a response period of 30 working days.
“2022 has been the second best year in terms of attracting foreign investment since there is data. 34,000 million euros arrived and in the first quarter of 2023 they already reached 10,000 million, which implies an improvement on last year’s data and reflects that Spanish regulation is attractive for international investment”, he assured Gomez.
The royal decree approved on Tuesday allows the investor to reduce the burdens and possible administrative hurdles and the response and resolution deadlines are reduced, one of the main demands of companies and investors.
The Minister of Industry also confirmed that he expects that the window will be available for the first 15 days of July to present the projects presented in the second call for the Electric Vehicle Perte, known as Perte VEC II. Gómez detailed that block A of the second call for the Perte VEC II, relating to batteries, will have 850 million euros, of which 550 million are subsidies and the remaining 287, loans.
In addition, the European Commission has published the new category exception regulation that allows block B to be removed from the Perte VEC II, aimed at specific projects related to the promotion of electric vehicles. “Once the regulation is published, we will start the procedure by the delegated commission and we will also announce the call for block B, VEC II”, confirmed the minister.
