Yesterday, on 17 May, the Basque Economic Agreement Joint Committee met to initial the agreements between the delegations of the Basque Country and the Spanish State, and which were signed by the Spanish Minister for the Treasury and Civil Service, Cristóbal Montoro, and by the Basque Government’s Minister for the Treasury and Economy, Pedro Azpiazu, thus bringing an end to a period of financial uncertainty and discord that has affected bilateral relations over the last 10 years.
During the meeting, held at the Ministry in Calle Alcalá in Madrid, the Committee members signed the deed which contains 11 agreements, including the review of the Net Quota (which has been the aim of the Basque side) and the Updating Index (as demanded by the Spanish State), both from the 2007 baseline. Based on this agreement, the figures and amounts needed for the final settlement of the quotas from 2011 to 2015 were also approved, along with establishing the provisional quota for 2016, which is due by 30 May.
Once the discrepancies had been overcome, the committee also agreed the figures for the 2017 provisional quota, which will act as the basis for the contribution of the Basque Country to the general charges of the State during the 2017-2021 five-year period. However, the approval of the applicable methodology will be included in the new five-year act that must be passed by parliament, after being agreed in a further meeting of the Basque Economic Agreement Joint Committee to be held in July.
The meeting likewise agreed to set up a working party to analyse the tax effects of the MERCEDES BENZ, S.A change in operations. It also ratified the agreements regarding budgetary stability signed by the Spanish State General Administration and the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country regarding the latter’s deficit and debt targets.
The Basque Country was represented by Pedro Azpiazu (the Basque Government’s Minister for the Treasury and Economy), Josu Erkoreka (Minister for Public Governance and Self-Government), Ramiro González (Araba/Álava Provincial Chairman), Unai Rementeria (Bizkaia Provincial Chairman), Markel Olano (Gipuzkoa Provincial Chairman) and Juan Miguel Bilbao (the Basque Government’s Deputy Minister for the Treasury and Financial Policy). The Spanish Central Government was represented by Cristóbal Montoro (Minister for the Treasury and Civil Service), José Enrique Fernández de Moya (Secretary of State for the Treasury), Alberto Nadal (Secretary of State for Budgets and Expenditure), Roberto Bermúdez de Castro (Secretary of State for Territorial Administrations), Juan Ignacio Romero (General Secretary of Territorial Coordination) and Belén Navarro (General Secretary of Local and Regional Funding).

Press releases

Last Thursday 6 April a seminar on the Economic Agreement in the media took place at the Bizkaia Aretoa, organised by the Documentation Centre for the Economic Agreement and the Dept. of Public Law (Financial & Tax Law Section) of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). The seminar was opened by José María Iruarrizaga, Bizkaia Provincial Councillor for Treasury Affairs, and by Patxi Juaristi, Deputy Rector of the Bizkaia Campus of the UPV/EHU, who stressed the importance of the Economic Agreement as the cornerstone of Basque self-government, and the need to promote it and publicise it via Basque society.

The speakers at the seminar were Pedro Luis Uriarte, the former Basque Govt. Treasury Minister who took a leading role in the recovery of the Agreement in 1981, Dr. Luis de Guezala of the Sabino Arana Foundation, who presented an analysis of how the Economic Agreement was dealt with in the written press between 1878 and 2002. Dr. Aritz Ipiña Bidaurrazaga, scientific manager at the Documentation Centre for the Economic Agreement and the Basque Provincial Treasuries, spoke about the Centre and Dr. Joseba Agirreazkuenaga, a professor at the UPV/EHU, and Dr. Eduardo J. Alonso Olea spoke in depth about the pro-autonomy movement at the Basque provincial councils from 1917 to 1919.

The seminar was attended by 117 people, including students of tax law, management staff and employees of the Bizkaia Treasury Department and members of the public interested in the Economic Agreement.

In its ruling of 13 December 2016, the Supreme Court classified as delivery of goods the contract under which an organisation provides its customers with supplies of fuel at the premises of third parties for which delivery was previously agreed between the clients of the former. The taxation authorities had denied that there was a prior transfer of the fuel to the intermediary, stating that the transfer occurred only between the supplier and the end clients, so that it understood that the relationship between the intermediary and the latter, who was provided with a credit card to pay for the supply, must be classified as the provision of financial services, located for the purposes of the Navarre Agreement at the tax domicile of the person liable to pay tax, in common territory.
Finally, in a ruling of 31 January 2017, the Supreme Court confirmed its previous doctrine, stating that the delivery of fuel by the seller from tanks owned by CLH must be understood as located in the territory in which these fiscal tanks are located, rejecting the application to the case of the ruling brought in on 13 April 2011 in the case of Rover.
For its part, the Supreme Court of the Basque Country handed down a ruling on 22 November affirming the legal capability of the Historic Territories to regulate a joint & several liability regime different from that envisaged in common regulations, based on authority under the Basque provincial charters to maintain, set and regulate their own taxation system within their territory.

Go to jurisprudence

The latest issue of Zergak, the Basque Country taxation magazine, describes in depth the taxation consequences of the extension and modification of Basque civil law enacted through Act 5/2015, 25 June, the importance of which Javier Armentia Basterra highlights in his article Reflections on the influence of Basque civil law in the area of taxation. It also includes an article by José Rubí on the approval of the Basque Country Local Institutions Act and the compliance by Basque local councils of the guarantee to provide a level of resources that must never be lower that that which corresponds to them under the application of the common regime legislation.

Go to scientific doctrine

Most Basques have heard of the Economic Agreement but do not know the details. This is one of the main conclusions of the EiTB Focus sociological survey that analyses the degree of knowledge and opinions of the Basque public regarding the Economic Agreement.
According to the survey by Gizaker for Euskal Irrati Telebista, 75% of the population of the Basque Country have heard of the Economic Agreement. In previous surveys, yes answers totalled around 50%.

Survey results