Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2665 actions· ✨ 90 recent

The European Investment Bank signed a EUR 175 million green loan with Iberdrola on 15 January 2026 to finance two new wind farms (274 MW combined, 38 turbines of 7.2 MW) integrated into Iberdrola's Tâmega pumped-storage hydropower complex in northern Portugal, part of a roughly EUR 350 million total investment. The loan is guaranteed by Spain's export credit agency Cesce, marking the second use of the EIB-Cesce guarantee instrument that backs green projects led by Spanish companies outside Spain. Global Trade Alert logs the loan as a "red" state-loan intervention on the same grounds as the first Cesce-backed EIB-Iberdrola operation (Windanker, Germany): below-market multilateral financing to a named commercial developer, underwritten by a national export credit agency.

The European Investment Bank signed a EUR 500 million (USD 576.75 million) green loan with Iberdrola on 3 November 2025 to finance the Windanker offshore wind farm, a 315 MW project under construction in the German Baltic Sea using 21 Siemens Gamesa SG 14-236 DD turbines. The financing is guaranteed by Spain's export credit agency Cesce under the inaugural use of a joint EIB-Cesce guarantee instrument supporting green projects led by Spanish companies outside Spain. Global Trade Alert logs the loan as a "red" state-loan intervention on the grounds that below-market EIB financing to a named commercial developer, backed by a national export credit agency, is a trade- and competition-distorting subsidy.

The UK's state-owned National Wealth Fund (NWF) provided a £600 million loan to ScottishPower (a subsidiary of Spain's Iberdrola) as part of a wider £1.35 billion financing package arranged by Bank of America and a syndicate of commercial banks. The financing accelerates capital deployment for seven of ScottishPower's priority transmission-network upgrade projects, including the Eastern Green Link 1 (EGL1) subsea interconnector and substation/overhead-line reinforcement work at five locations across Scotland. The projects aim to reduce grid congestion, connect more renewable generation, and lower system costs for consumers.

On 26 February 2025 the European Commission adopted the "Clean Industrial Deal" (CID), Communication COM(2025) 85 final, framed as a joint roadmap for competitiveness and decarbonisation. The CID bundles state-aid simplification, energy-cost relief, lead-market creation, capital mobilisation and circular-economy mandates into a single industrial strategy targeting both energy-intensive industries (steel, metals, chemicals, cement) and clean-tech manufacturing (batteries, solar, wind, heat pumps, electrolyzers). The Commission claims the package will mobilise more than €100 billion of public-and-private financing for EU-made clean manufacturing through a strengthened Innovation Fund, amendments to the InvestEU Regulation (up to €50bn additional guarantee capacity) and a proposed Industrial Decarbonisation Bank. CID directly precedes the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF, adopted 25 June 2025) and seeds legislative work on an Industrial Accelerator Act, a Circular Economy Act, and a strengthened CBAM. Severity 4 on mixed basis: explicit €100bn+ quant headline plus qualitative breadth across the EU industrial perimeter, formally re-anchoring the von der Leyen II mandate around competitiveness rather than pure decarbonisation.

Spain's comprehensive 2023 implementing regulation of Law 19/2003, of 4 July, on the legal regime of capital movements and economic transactions with the exterior. Adopted as Real Decreto 571/2023 of 4 July 2023, published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 5 July 2023 (BOE-A-2023-15549), and in force from 1 September 2023. The Decree repeals the predecessor Royal Decree 664/1999 of 23 April on foreign investments, updates the declaration regime to reflect twenty years of practice and capital-market innovation, and operationalises the Article 7-bis horizontal FDI-screening mechanism that the 2020 COVID-emergency reforms (RDL 8/2020 and RDL 11/2020) inserted into Law 19/2003. It introduces a binding consultation regime (consulta vinculante), reduces the screening review period to three months, refines the catalogue of sensitive sectors (defence, dual-use, critical technologies, critical infrastructure, critical inputs, media, electoral process, access to sensitive information, and activities affecting public security, health and order), and codifies notification thresholds for non-EU/EFTA investors (>10% control or material influence; minimum transaction values of EUR 5 million / EUR 1 million for certain sectors).