The Supreme Court, in its Judgment 1160/2026, of 15 October, has fully annulled the Real Decreto 809/2025, on the protection of pigs. The ruling does not question its animal welfare objectives, but the assessment of its economic impact. The report stated that the rule "has no significant direct economic impact" without estimating how many farms would be affected or what investments or costs it would entail for them. For the court, when the report prevents knowing the reasons for that conclusion, the defect "ceases to be merely formal in order to become a substantial defect in the procedure for drafting regulatory provisions".
The Supreme Court had already annulled, for the same reason, the royal decree on the tariff for court procurators, in 2024, and the density tables of Royal Decree 159/2023, in 2025. Law 50/1997, on the Government, requires that regulatory projects analyze their economic impact. What is new is the intensity with which the courts oversee that analysis, which they already consider part of the validity of the rule.
A strategic issue for environmental and industrial policy
Spain is going through a decisive stage. Ecological transition, reindustrialization, and strategic autonomy rest on new rules that require companies to make long-term investments, while the European Union has placed simplification and competitiveness at the center of its agenda. The quality with which regulations are drafted is already a factor in the country's competitiveness.
A rule that is annulled postpones the objective it was pursuing, leaves those who invested to comply on time in a worse position than those who waited, and weakens investors' trust, a basic condition for attracting the industrial projects that the transition needs.
Five proposals to regulate with strength
From Vinces, we propose five initiatives to reinforce the method by which regulations are drafted:
- Make the impact assessment memory an instrument for decision-making. It should be prepared while the regulation is being designed, and not to justify it once it has been drafted. It should quantify how many operators it affects, what investments it requires, who bears them, and what effect it has on competitiveness, employment, and SMEs.
- Develop the regulations with the sectors. A good part of the knowledge needed to regulate well is in the companies: real costs, available technologies, and investment timelines. A structured and stable dialogue from the diagnostic phase, reflected in the assessment, improves the regulation without necessarily reducing its ambition and strengthens its legitimacy.
- Independently review regulations of broader scope. Ideally, an independent body should verify its economic analysis before approval, as the Regulatory Scrutiny Board of the European Commission does, the Normenkontrollrat in Germany, or the ATR in the Netherlands.
- Jointly govern environmental and industrial policy. In our work with industrial companies, we find that the same activity can be subject to several regulations whose purposes, at times, conflict. Environment and Industry should share leadership and regulatory planning. The assessment should measure the cumulative burden that companies bear, in addition to the one that each new obligation adds.
- Provide predictability for investment, with realistic schedules, proportionate transitional periods, and a subsequent evaluation of each regulation that allows correction in time.
The Administration has highly qualified civil servants, who know in depth the sectors they regulate and are fully capable of carrying out this work. The goal is to give them the time, the means, and the data needed. If this is done in that way, this ruling may help to ensure that the next environmental and industrial regulations are approved with the solidity that those who must invest to comply with them need.