As the world continues to watch on, Brexit enters yet another countdown to meet the 31st October 2019 deadline. The British Government updated its website, www.gov.uk with the following statement:
Are you selling or renting your property? Make sure you know the facts, to avoid getting caught out!
A while back, we covered how the Spanish government had been given an ultimatum from the European Union, regarding energy performance certificates, since the rest of Europe had already been applying this obligatory system for a number of years. Since the law was enforced back in June of this year, there has been much talk and confusion about it so I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the matter.
Lately there has been much talk about changes in residencia applications in Spain, but what changes have taken place and who is eligible to apply from now on?
The law in question is “Orden PRE/1490/2012, 9th July”, that covers the rights of European Union members to circulate freely within member states and the conditions that must be met by those who wish to reside in another state for a period of more than 3 months. The law is more extensive but basically, supervision of residencia applications has been somewhat lax which in turn has proved to be a drain on the system, particularly on the resources of the National Health System as well as people benefiting from resident travel discounts without contributing to the Spanish economy.
As much as it pains me to write this story, it is still highly relevant because Standards and Poor’s rating service has downgraded Spain’s Canary Islands today from A+ to AA-, which only demonstrates Spain’s current financial struggle.
This is a massive blow to the region but the credit rater has also warned that the region could suffer further downgrades as it has been flagged with a “creditwatch negative status”. This basically warns of problematic public finances and high unemployment issues stemming from the year 2008 which has worsened over time. From data received in September of this year, unemployment stands at approximately 25% and is predicted to increase over the upcoming year.
