Under the argument that the war in Ukraine and the inflation crisis have substantially modified the economic situation, the Government is trying to persuade the European Commission to rewrite the agreement reached by both parties in the Recovery Plan to introduce more tolls on the roads Spanish.
The commitment sealed with Brussels contemplates that “it is necessary to develop a pay-per-use system for the high-capacity road network that makes it possible to cover maintenance costs and integrate the negative externalities of road transport as is the case with other infrastructures”. And that is what is in effect at the moment. However, the Government is now considering modifying these lines in the technical negotiations of the addendum.
Implementing more tolls on Spanish highways (there are currently less than 2,000 kilometers in Spain in which you pay to use the road) would be an unpopular measure that would harm the middle and working classes. That is why the government negotiators have proposed maintaining the current model, in which the maintenance of the roads is paid for by budgets. There are other formulas that the Spanish Executive would be willing to explore.
“What the Government is doing with the European Commission, within the framework of the development of the Recovery Plan, is to see how we approach the maintenance of the road network without establishing payment for use,” said the minister spokesperson on Tuesday, Elizabeth Rodriguez. “A global plan that also involves more sustainable mobility, promoting other uses and other mobility, such as public transport and its freeness, as we have done in recent months,” she added after the last Council of Ministers before 23-J.
The Government has already eliminated any reference to tolls in the Sustainable Mobility law that was stranded in Congress due to the electoral advance. “The will is unequivocal,” defend sources from the economic team.
But the last word is in the negotiation between Spain and Brussels. The teams from the Ministry of Economy and the Department of Economic Affairs of the Presidency of the Government continue to negotiate the technical aspects of the addendum. The objective is to close these conversations before the end of this month so that during the next legislature the political negotiation can be finished. The Spanish negotiators reject that proposing other formulas to pay for road maintenance puts the receipt of European funds at risk and affirm that “Spain is a country that complies.”
