The European Commission could exempt Spain from the implementation of tolls for use on national highways from 2024. Some media outlets, such as ‘La Vanguardia’ and ‘El País’, already take this measure for granted. However, the Ministry of Transport is “optimistic”, although they choose to be more cautious and tell laSexta that there is still no official response from the Commission.

As Government sources have indicated to laSexta, the Executive is negotiating this matter with the Commission and the Government’s will is not to apply any pay-per-use system. “The Commission is analyzing our approach and there is a shared vision that allows us to be optimistic, but we still do not have an official response,” the Ministry states.

This same week, the acting Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, conveyed the “shared vision” of the European Commission with the Government about “the conditions that existed at the time it was proposed” The introduction of tolls on Spanish highways, provided for in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, “are not the same as today”, which allows them to be “optimistic”.

In statements to the media from Brussels, the person responsible for Transport and Housing policies indicated that she “knows” that the European Commission is “analyzing” the case and that it “shares that criterion.” Likewise, Sánchez insisted on the Government’s desire not to install tolls on highways. and indicated that they have put forward “alternative proposals.”

The introduction of tolls in 2024 on Spanish highways became one of the campaign issues in the last general elections. The acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, ended up recognizing that the Executive is in “negotiation” with Brussels on the Recovery Plan regarding payment for the use of highways for the receipt of European funds.

“It is true that the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan incorporates this possibility (that of payment for use of highways). It is also true that in the negotiation that we are doing on the addendum with the European Commission, that possibility is already withdrawn because things have happened from 2021 to 2023,” Pedro Sánchez said then.

Thus, along the same lines as Raquel Sánchez, she pointed out that there was a different reality than when this measure was proposed and that, therefore, They had begun a negotiation with the European Commission to change their position.