The future Spanish Government will not finally be obliged to implement a toll system on the roads dependent on the State in exchange for continuing to receive European recovery funds within the deadline and in the appropriate manner. Not in 2024, as planned, nor in the following years.
This summer, the Spanish Executive asked the European Commission to renegotiate, as part of the Addendum to the Recovery Plan, one of the most complex points and has achieved its goal. According to the documents to which this newspaper has had access, Brussels has accepted the proposal to exclude from the commitments to start paying to use motorways and motorways.
The agreement between Spain and Brussels provides for the replacement of tolls with other solutions to try to reduce polluting emissions from road transport. Specifically, the Spanish and Community negotiators have agreed to include in the future Sustainable Mobility law a regulation that was stuck in Parliament due to the early calling of general elections and that will be processed again this legislature, a series of measures to promote the freight transport by rail.
The agreed changes are already black on white. In this way, the two parties agree to delete from milestone three the obligation to “establish a financing system for the conservation and maintenance of public infrastructures and that internalizes environmental costs”.
In exchange, the future Sustainable Mobility law will include three new features: firstly, “the obligation to implement a railway highway development program in the corridors in which it is viable and there is a business interest in its development “. In other words, Spain is committed to promoting different rail corridors to try to channel greater freight transport.
Secondly, the next Spanish Government will have to undertake the commitment of approving a “bonus on railway tariffs for the traffic of goods for a minimum period of five years”. Finally, Spain will develop “a support program for the rail transport of goods”, with measures to encourage modal shift from the road and with a plan to modernize the sector.
The agreement reached with the Commission also includes amending the “C1R2 reform” of the Recovery Plan. The obligation to create “a payment mechanism for the use of State roads, which will begin to operate from 2024, in accordance with the polluter pays principle”, is removed. This mention remains on wet paper and in its place are included the three novelties described above to promote rail transport.
The European Commission has already informed Spain that it accepts these changes; modifications that will be official when all negotiations on the Addendum are closed.
With the closure of the renegotiation of the tolls, an issue that has been piloted by the Department of Economic Affairs of the Presidency of the Government and the Ministry of Transport, Spain shelved one of the commitments that had generated the most tension. The director general of Tránsit, Pere Navarro, ignited controversy in the midst of the July 23 general election campaign when he stated in an interview that “what I can tell you is that next year, due to the imposition of Brussels, we will have to put tolls, it demands it”. The Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, had to deny her party colleague and Navarro himself later apologized for the “confusion” generated.
Brussels spoke out those days through its economic spokeswoman, Veerle, who limited herself to saying that “the Spanish Recovery Plan, as proposed by Spain and approved by the European Commission, includes the commitment of “adopt a sustainable mobility and transport financing law by December 2023”. “We understand that the Spanish plan refers to a payment mechanism for the use of roads that will start in 2024 in line with the principle of ‘who pollutes pays'”, he added.
After intense negotiations throughout the summer, Spain has achieved the goal of maintaining the current model, in which road maintenance is covered by budgets, in exchange for exploring decarbonization through the train .
