RES investors represented by law firm Metaxas & Associates have recently won a series of legal disputes with the Greek state, making, through targeted legal pressure, the latter reimburse investors with PV plant development grants that were retroactively significantly reduced.
The law firm is also representing a large number of RES producers operating in Greece fighting the ‘solidarity' PV plant tax, before the national courts and the European Commission.
Solar investors in Greece have won a significant victory in their ongoing legal disputes with the government over the austerity-inspired cuts applied to the renewable energy sector and in particular as regards grants attributed to them in relation to their RES investments.
Athens-based law firm Metaxas and Associates, which is waging a number of legal battles on behalf of PV developers, recorded a victory in its fight to force the government to return investment subsidies originally offered and then reduced to drive renewable projects in the country.
Many leading RES investors have hired Metaxas & Associates law firm in their attempt to legally repeal a retroactive taxation mechanism imposed by the Greek State against RES producers.
The law firm participated on October 9 in the oral hearing of a pilot trial held by the Hellenic Council of State to determine whether, as Metaxas and RES investors claim, a retroactive solidarity tax of between 25% and 42% imposed on the revenue of PV plants violates both EU law and, in particular, EU state aid law as well as articles of the Greek constitution.
The decision of the Hellenic Council that is now expected will guide the Administrative Courts which will determine appeals against the tax.
Metaxas and Associates also has two complaints lodged with the EU related to the solidarity tax on the basis the levy, by its selective nature, breaches EU state aid law and breaks the spirit of European Commission's communications forbidding retroactive modification of the framework under which renewables generators provide energy.
