The Council of Ministers will pay 1,069.9 million euros to lit as compensation for the liquidation of the actions taken to deal with the increase in traffic on the AP-7, in the sections Barcelona-La Jonquera, Barcelona-Tarragona, and Montmeló and El Papiol and Zaragoza-Mediterranean, on the AP-2 . In the agreement between the company and the General State Administration, these actions were also foreseen to mitigate the congestion of vehicles that occurred at certain times in certain sections of the route. The concession ended on August 31 last year and the agreement between the company and the state states that the payment must be made within six months of maturity.
The actions that were agreed as a result of the increase in traffic were the extension to a third lane in the section between the Mediterranean Link and Vilaseca / Salou; a third lane on the Maçanet-Fornells de la Selva and Medinyà-La Jonquera sections; the extension to a third and fourth lane in the section between Fornells de La Selva and Medinyà and the construction of the links of Fornells, Medinyà and Sant Gregori; and the implementation of a closed toll on the Martorell-Vilaseca / Salou section.
Of the 1,069.9 million euros, 505.5 million euros correspond to the executed investment, 143.5 million euros to the tax effect and the rest corresponds to the capitalization of the compensation balance.
At the beginning of May last year, the Stability Plan that Pedro Sánchez’s executive sent to the European authorities provided for compensation of up to 1,291 million euros, far from the 3,000 that Abertis was claiming.
The conflict originated in 2006 when the then Minister of Public Works Magdalena Álvarez signed an agreement with the concessionaire to carry out works to widen these roads in charge of the estimated increase in traffic and without affecting the cost in the price of tolls.