Europe Approves Tolls on Spain’s Motorways and Roads

A month ago it was merely a rumour, today, June 18, it is finally a reality: there will be tolls on motorways and possibly secondary roads in Spain. And it is that in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of Spain approved on Wednesday, June 16, it states that there will be a “payment for use of the high-capacity road network”. This is exposed up to three times in the report approved by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in the company of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez.

As reported by La Opinion de Malaga, on page 127 of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of Spain, corresponding to point D on Sustainable Infrastructures, the following is stated: “Finally, it is necessary to develop a payment system for use of the high-capacity road network that allows cover maintenance costs and integrate the negative externalities of road transport as in other infrastructures ”. That is, they ratify the implementation of payment for use, or toll, on the busiest motorways, and justify it by means of the need to be able to address the maintenance of the state’s road network in this way.

In a short time, paying to use certain roads will be implemented since this controversial measure is included in two more points of the text with which Europe has been granted €140,000 million of aid for the crisis generated by the coronavirus. On page 92 there is talk of the “establishment of a mechanism for high-intensity roads and the implementation of mobility plans for urban use”. In the text there is an error that alters the order of some words but specifies again to establish a payment mechanism for the use of high-intensity roads ”. An idea that is observed once again on page 134, where it speaks again of “the development of a payment mechanism for the use of roads”, within a context of sustainable mobility and the Law of Mobility and Financing of Transport.