Podemos accuses Ferrovial of laughing at the Spanish and demands that it return “every last euro” of public aid

The party’s general secretary, after participating in the commemoration ceremony for the International Day of the Roma People in Madrid, has charged against Ferrovial’s decision to move its fiscal headquarters to the European country. At the time of these statements, the shareholders’ meeting is being held, whose main item on the agenda is voting on the operation, which means that the subsidiary that encompasses the group’s international business, Ferrovial International, based in the Netherlands, absorb the parent company of the company, located in Spain. “The reorganization does not affect the continuity of Ferrovial in our country. Ferrovial is not leaving Spain, it will maintain employment, activity”, Del Pino argued. “Spain has always been our country and we have not given it up,” said the manager.

Belarra has, however, described the decision as “unacceptable” and has insisted that the State must be “very forceful” with a company that in his opinion is “laughing at the Spaniards who put their money to keep companies like this afloat in the worst of the pandemic. Asked what measures she believes the Government should take, she limited herself to saying that “when the State wants to, it usually can.” “It stayed afloat thanks to that help and today in good times they take things and leave. They have to return every last euro they received from aid to the Spanish.

The Government has warned in recent days about the consequences that the decision could have for the company. On Tuesday, the Secretary of State for the Economy, Gonzalo García Andrés, sent a letter to the CEO of Ferrovial, Ignacio Madridejos, in which he insisted that there are no economic reasons for the transfer of the construction company’s headquarters to the Netherlands and that therefore it could face a large fiscal cost if the Treasury determines that the movement does not have a business logic and only pursues “tax savings”.

In the event that its restructuring operation and change of headquarters to the Netherlands does not respond to a valid economic reason, Moncloa understands, it will not be able to take advantage of the tax advantages of the special merger regime. It could face a large fiscal cost if the Treasury determines that the movement does not have a business logic and only pursues “tax savings”. Already in early March, when Ferrovial announced its intention to move to Spain, the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, considered that the company was not “committed to its country”.

The government’s reaction, however, is insufficient for Podemos, as its leader stated this Thursday, who has reiterated that the response must be much more forceful. A month ago, United We Can registered a bill in Congress to force companies that make movements such as Ferrovial to return the public aid received. The proposal claimed that all those companies that moved their headquarters or their production outside the country and had benefited from subsidies or public aid be obliged to repay with interest the money they had received from the State during the last ten years.

“We Spaniards saved Ferrovial from our taxes with public money during the pandemic through the ERTE mechanism, to give just one example of the multiple public aid that this multinational has received over the last decades”m recalled at that time the spokesman for the parliamentary group, Pablo Echenique. The group then also called for an effort at the European level “to standardize tax rates throughout the EU, and especially corporate tax, to put an end to tax dumping between Member States.”