The Portuguese Parliament approved this Thursday a bill from the Socialist Party to eliminate tolls starting next year on several highways – some of them connect with Spanish territory – when there are no alternative routes that allow safe and quality passage. The socialists estimate that the cost of the initiative will be around 157 million euros.
This will mean the end of payment on the A4 Transmontana and the Marão tunnel, which connects with the Spanish province of Zamora; the A13 from Pinhal Interior; the A22 of the Algarve, which connects that Portuguese region with Andalusia (Spain); the A23 from Beira Interior and the A24 from Interior north, which reaches Ourense (Spain).
The measure will also affect the A25 of Beira Litoral and Alta, which connects with the Spanish province of Salamanca, and the A28 of Minho, which connects Oporto with Vigo, in Pontevedra (Spain), in the Esposende-Antas and Neiva-Darque sections. .
The bill seeks to put an end to tolls on some former SCUTs, the Portuguese acronym for highways, at no cost to users, starting in 2025. The system was eliminated in 2011 and since then the toll has been collected from all drivers who use those roads through an electronic system.
After this parliamentary approval, there are still other procedures until it becomes a reality. The text must be signed by the head of Parliament before being sent to the president of the country for promulgation. It then has to be sent to the Government for the prime minister’s signature before being published in the Diario de la República.
The parliamentary spokesperson for the PP of Galicia, Alberto Pazos Couñago, has applauded this decision by Portugal and has insisted that “it should serve as an example” to the Spanish socialists. The politician has made reference to the fact that the Government should remove the tolls on the AP-9 and AP-53, as well as abandon any intention to implement pay-per-use of highways throughout the country.
And although in recent years the barriers on some of the State’s highways have been raised, the Government has not yet resolved the issue of tolls in Spain. On April 24, the Minister of Transport and Urban Mobility, Óscar Puente, assured that no new tolls will be implemented in this legislature and that those that are still in force are due to the extensions that José María Aznar gave to highway concessions. between 1996 and 2004, as is the case of AP-9.
