The Diplomat
Yesterday, the Government clearly expressed its rejection of the decision of the construction company Ferrovial to move its registered office from Spain to the Netherlands, considering that this company “was born and has grown in Spain thanks to public investment”. For its part, the PP attributed the news to the Government’s “bashing” of Spanish companies and even warned of its possible “contagion effect”.
Last Tuesday, Ferrovial’s Board of Directors proposed a merger between the parent company and Ferrovial International, a Dutch European corporation that already owns 86% of the company’s assets, which will entail the transfer of the registered office from Spain to the Netherlands. Furthermore, as the company informed the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), it will apply for dual admission to trading in that country, also listing in Spain, in order to subsequently be listed in the United States as well.
The First Vice-President of the Government, Nadia Calviño, held a conversation yesterday with the Executive Chairman of Ferrovial, Rafael del Pino Calvo-Sotelo, in which she expressed her “rejection” of the “erroneous” decision to move the company’s registered office to the Netherlands and warned that “it is not acceptable” that a company that “was born and has grown in Spain thanks to public investment should show this lack of commitment to its country”.
For her part, the Second Vice-President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, demanded that the Ministry of Economy “adopt the necessary measures to prevent this from happening” and asked the company’s shareholders “to reconsider their position” because Ferrovial is a company that has grown thanks to “enormous contracts with the Public Administration”. Díaz also advocated for a Europe in which “tax dumping and tax havens cannot exist”.
In the same vein, the leader of Podemos and Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, called for joint measures in the EU to eradicate “tax havens” within the continent and prevent companies like Ferrovial from avoiding the “fair” tax model defended by the Government, and warned, in statements to Cuatro, that the possible relocation of Ferrovial is a clear example of “tax dumping”.
Likewise, the Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, stated that the transfer of Ferrovial’s headquarters to the Netherlands “is not the best news we could hope for”, because, although “it is true that it is a company that has 80% of its business outside Spain”, it is “a very important company, which was born and grew thanks to public investment in this country”. “What we have to do, as a government, is always to defend the interests of Spain, to defend that Ferrovial’s investment plans in our country are maintained” and, in this sense, “I have been assured that this will be the case, that the jobs will continue to be maintained, that, therefore, Ferrovial continues to be a company that feels Spanish and that will continue to be committed to our country”, she added.
Nuancing the effects of Ferrovial’s decision, the Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, recalled that the company has more than 80% of its activity outside Spain, so it is no longer taxed on these profits in the country, and assured that the part corresponding to the national activity will continue to be taxed in the same way in Spain.
PP and Podemos
For her part, the secretary general of the Partido Popular, Cuca Gamarra, linked Ferrovial’s decision to the “bashing” that, in her opinion, the Government is exercising against Spanish companies, and asked Calviño to ask herself several “questions before singling out a company that continues to maintain its activity in Spain”: “Am I responsible for the lack of legal security that causes many companies to have to opt for other countries? Am I responsible as a Government for the lack of incentives to attract investment? Am I having, as a Government, a behavior of defense of the economic and business fabric or am I allowing our economic and business fabric to be beaten even by the Government itself? In addition, the PP’s Deputy Secretary of Economy, Juan Bravo, warned of the danger of a “contagion effect” following Ferrovial’s departure from Spain.
Likewise, the spokesman for Podemos in the Congress, Pablo Echenique, called for public administrations to stop awarding contracts to Ferrovial. “If Ferrovial is going to the Netherlands to pay less taxes, then let it be the Netherlands and not Spain that gives them public works contracts, right?” he wrote on social networks. “Spanish public money, better to invest it in contracts with companies that respect our country and pay their taxes here,” he added.
