Nuno de Oliveira Garcia on the decrease of withholding tax rate | Expresso

The package of tax measures included in Royal Decree-law 7/2026, of 20 March, consists of various incentives in the field of direct taxation of individuals and companies to reduce dependence and promote energy savings and efficiency, electric mobility, and support for self-consumption and investment in renewables. Moreover, it includes a set of extraordinary and temporary measures applicable to energy taxation and indirect taxation aimed at reducing the tax burden on products particularly affected by rising prices. Lastly, certain changes are made to various local taxes.

The Constitutional Court reinstates established doctrine and rejects the possibility for employers to resort to non-routine technical (or human) resources during a strike, where such resources involve minimising, reducing or limiting the effects of the industrial action in keeping the company running.

In this paper we outline the changes introduced by Royal Decree-law 7/2026 to the environmental impact assessment procedure: first, through the creation and regulation of renewables acceleration areas (RAAs), wherein renewable energy projects will be exempt from environmental impact assessments, and, second, by modifying certain aspects of the environmental impact assessment for energy generation and storage projects, as well as for transmission and distribution facilities.

The measures related to grid access and connection respond to investor interest in large-scale decarbonization projects, data centres, electric mobility, and energy storage, and aim to reduce the current hoarding of demand-side access.

Royal Decree-law 7/2026, of 20 March, approving the Comprehensive Plan to Address the Crisis in the Middle East - published in the Official Journal of Spain on 21 March - introduces significant changes to the regulation of the electricity sector. Although it needs to be ratified by Parliament, generally speaking it came into force on the day of its publication.

Despite its logic and simplicity, Article 18 of the Building (Unified Regulation) Act continues to give rise to interpretative problems in higher court case law. It has not quite found its place alongside Article 1145 of the Civil Code and Article 43 of the Insurance Contracts Act.

Reduced connection charges for electro-intensive consumers and the Fund for the Promotion of Industrial Decarbonization will help improve the industrial sector's competitiveness in the current economic climate.

Although the judgment states that the landlord has three remedies available, in reality he has only one — whether he seeks performance or opts for termination — which is damages.

In its Judgment of 26 February 2026, in Case C-524/23, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that the Kingdom of Belgium has failed to fulfil its obligations under Directive (EU) 2016/1164, by failing to adopt the statutory, regulatory and administrative provisions necessary to ensure taxpayers’ right to a deduction of the tax paid by controlled foreign companies from the corporate income tax liability of the taxpayer.