On August 4, 2026, the European Commission opened an in-depth State aid investigation (Case SA.102404) into an Energy Charter Treaty award ordering Spain to compensate JGC Holdings Corporation, a Japanese investor, for the adverse impacts of the 2013 modification of its renewable electricity support scheme. The 2021 award fixed compensation at EUR 23.5 million plus interest and costs, and Spain informed the Commission that it paid Blasket Renewable Investments, the US fund to which the award had been assigned. The Commission’s preliminary view is that the award, and in any event its implementation, constitutes State aid under Article 107(1) TFEU, and it relies on its 2017 approval of the amended scheme, which stated that compensation awarded by tribunals over the modification would itself be aid requiring notification. The investigation is nonetheless the first to treat payment of an award held by a non-EU investor as potentially unlawful aid. The Achmea, Komstroy, and Micula case law had confined the incompatibility of investor-state arbitration with EU law to intra-EU disputes, and Spain, with the Commission’s support, refuses to pay the intra-EU awards arising from the same reforms while it honoured this one. It has been argued that a confirmed finding would bar member states from paying awards to non-EU investors and require recipients to repay sums received, depriving arbitration against member states of practical effect and leaving the roughly 1,200 bilateral investment treaties between member states and third countries, and the EU’s own agreements, without assurance of payment.