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Seminar on the Economic Agreement, 6 April
Friday, 24 de March de 2017

The seminar that the Economic Agreement Documentation Centre and the Provincial Taxation Authorities hold annually will discuss the Economic Agreement and the media. Along with other renowned specialists, those taking part will include Pedro Luis Uriarte Santamaría, the recent promoter of the Agreement Community-Gure Kontzertua. As usual, the seminar will be held in the Sala Mitxelena in the Bizkaia Aretoa.

Programme

Ad Concordiam publishes a thesis in English on the relationship between nationalisms and the autonomous financing systems
Wednesday, 7 de December de 2016

A new thesis, written entirely in English, has recently been added to the Ad Concordiam Thesis collection. The thesis studies the way that financing systems influence and determine the agenda of parties with nationalist aspiration, with a particular focus on Convergència i Unió in Catalonia and on EAJ-PNV in the Basque Country.

The thesis, the work of Dr. Caroline Gray, from Scotland, is part of a broader research project at Liverpool University on the evolution of the territorial proposals of the Catalan and Basque nationalist parties. The project is studying the different social, political and economic factors, which have influenced the direction taken by the nationalist parities since the transition, and particularly since the 1990s. The thesis methodology is based on a broad array of interviews with leading politicians from different parties, their advisors and also some civil servants, most of whom working in the autonomous government, but also at Provincial Council level in the Basque Country. It analyses all the negotiations related to the autonomous financing system since the 1980s and the political dynamics around those negotiations.

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Supreme Court confirms application of LGT as rule of common administrative procedure & rejects actions by provincial authorities outside their territory
Thursday, 17 de November de 2016

In two recent rulings, the Supreme Court has found against the arguments put forward by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia. The first is a ruling dated 24 June last, which rejects the call to render null and void Royal Decree 515/2013 of 5 July regulating the criteria and procedures for determining and passing on liabilities for failure to comply with EU law, given that the wording of the regulatory provisions fail to include a clause expressly preserving the unique nature of the provincial of the bodies of provincial law applicable in the historical territories of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country for the purposes of application of Public General Act [Ley Orgánica] 2/2012 of 27 April on Budgetary Stability and Financial Sustainability. The second ruling, brought in on 29 June, rejects the contention that provincial tax authorities have the authority to issue demands for information outside their territories, thus confirming the criterion applied by the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country in its ruling dated 3 February 2015.

Moreover, the court continues to issue rulings that confirm the doctrine of instance concerning the status of the General Taxation Act [Ley General Tributaria] as a rule of common procedure, opening the way to declaring null and void actions to review earnings from economic activities taken under procedures commencing with self-assessment, maintaining the inappropriateness of the said procedure and the need to use the restricted checking procedure (Supreme Court ruling dated 29 June and High Court of Justice of the Basque Country ruling of 6 October 2016).

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Decision of the Arbitration Panel regarding the bill submitted by the PSE on the Internal Institutional Organisation of the Autonomous Community
Thursday, 3 de November de 2016

The Arbitration Panel of the Basque Country has ruled on the jurisdiction issues raised by Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa Provincial Councils, as well as by the Araba General Assemblies, regarding the “Bill on the Internal Institutional Organisation of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country“, introduced by the Basque Socialist Party (PSE) and which the Basque Parliament considered on 12 November 2015 and which was published in the Basque Parliament Gazette on 27 November 2015.

As is concluded in the attached document analysing the Decision, prepared by Jose Luis Etxeberria Monasterio, Chief Counsel of Bizkaia Provincial Council, and María Barrena, a lawyer from the same institution, the Arbitration Panel, with the dissenting vote of its Chairman – who is, in turn, the Chairman of the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country -, essentially found for the jurisdiction issues brought by the Provincial Councils of the three provinces regarding the Bill and declared that an important number of its articles are not in keeping with the distribution of powers between the institutions of the Autonomous Community and the provinces.

Decision 1/2016
Analysis of the Decision

Grappling with the Quota
Sunday, 16 de October de 2016

Issue 2-2014 of the EC series of the Working Papers, published by the Valencia Institute of Economic Research, includes a paper by Antoni Zabalza and Julio López Laborda, entitled “The Uneasy Coexistence of the Spanish Foral and Common Regional Finance Systems“, where they conclude that the quota is none other than an indirect way of calculating the equalization transfer between the central government and the region in question, so that if the expenditure needs are measured consistently throughout the system, the way of calculating the quota is totally neutral. According to the authors, an economic advantage occurs from the imputation procedure used to calculate the quota that is justified in over 60% due to differences in jurisdiction with the communities under the common system.

Go to Doctrine of the Authors