Approval of the text in the lower house allows the first national sustainable mobility law to continue its passage through the Senate, a key regulation to mitigate the impacts of the most polluting sector of the Spanish economy.
The organisations in the coalition highly value the support given by the parliamentary groups of Sumar, EH Bildu, ERC, Podemos and BNG to the amendment proposals presented.
Madrid, 8 October. After intense debate and a close vote, the Plenary of Congress this afternoon gave the green light to the Sustainable Mobility Law, with votes in favour from PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Junts, EH Bildu and PNV, the abstention of Podemos and votes against from the Partido Popular, Vox and UPN.
In response to the approval in Congress of the Sustainable Mobility Bill, Fundación Renovables and the other organisations signing this statement declare that:
The Sustainable Mobility Law represents a step forward in the decarbonisation of the transport-mobility sector. Although the text does not have the level of ambition we would have liked, it contains significant elements with real capacity to reduce the sector’s impacts and improve people’s lives, public health and the environment. Civil-society organisations have worked intensely in recent years to introduce improvements into the text of the law.
The approval of the Sustainable Mobility Law brings to an end more than three years of parliamentary processing and negotiation in Congress for a text that, since it was drafted as a preliminary bill in 2022, received hundreds of amendments from all parliamentary groups. It should be remembered that the approval of this law is an obligation arising from Law 7/2021 on Climate Change and Energy Transition, in which decarbonisation targets for the transport sector were not included. In the coming weeks, the text approved in the lower house will move to the Senate, where processing will continue.
The transport sector is unquestionably the main source of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions in Spain. In 2024, it accounted for 33.3% of total GHG emissions, according to data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. Road transport alone was responsible for 32.1% of total emissions.
Transport is also one of the main causes of high levels of air pollution, especially in urban areas. According to the European Environment Agency, Spain recorded 30,000 premature deaths in 2022: 18,500 due to particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), 5,500 attributable to nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and 6,100 due to exposure to tropospheric ozone.
During the processing of the law, the organisations managed to include the following elements in the text:
- The commitment, in the purpose of the law, to achieve climate neutrality in transport by 2050. This means that, for the first time, total decarbonisation targets are applied to a specific economic sector.
- The recognition of multimodality, energy efficiency, social justice and inclusiveness as guiding principles of the mobility system.
- The obligation for companies with more than 200 employees to draw up sustainable commuting plans. Initially, the bill only provided for this obligation for companies with more than 500 employees, which account for barely 1% of the total.
- The obligation to draw up a national strategy against Transport Poverty and the inclusion of its definition.
- The revision of the DGT environmental labelling system so that it includes vehicles’ CO2 emissions.
- The removal of the explicit reference to liquefied natural gas—of fossil origin—as a priority fuel in maritime transport.
- The promotion of the elimination of domestic flights with rail alternatives of up to 2.5 hours.
- The recovery of night trains and rail connections with other European Union countries.
- The development of a national strategy to promote cycling.
- The promotion of children’s mobility in urban planning.
In this regard, Fundación Renovables and the 14 organisations that have worked together to improve this law state:
“We urge political groups and the Government to deepen the different elements of the Law in order to move towards a genuinely fair and sustainable transport and mobility system. The Law is not up to the demands of the times, but it provides a good basis from which to keep working”.
“This coalition of social, trade-union, environmental and youth organisations welcomes the fact that Podemos’ abstention has finally allowed the Sustainable Mobility Law to move forward. It trusts that this will be the starting point for continued progress in implementing ambitious and coherent mobility and transport policies, including infrastructure, from social, environmental and climate perspectives”.
