Bridge proposes to compute part of the railway spending as defense

The need for Spain to increase the expenditure destined for Defense has led the Minister of Transportation, Oscar Puente, to open the door for part of the investments that its department materializes in the railroad can be integrated into that 2% military over GDP that Brussels will force all countries in 2030. The approach is simple: how train tracks can have a “dual”, both civil and military, Public money injections aimed at these infrastructure could serve to meet community demands without having to detract other budget items.

Bridge has put two concrete examples on the table to put this idea into practice: «We have two fundamental runners, and more now that there is talk of dual infrastructures of public use and military use, such as They are the Atlantic and Mediterranean corridor ». In these two great public works, it will “try to indirectly take advantage of the opportunity” to invest in civil and the military, in a context in which the debate is directed towards the investments in defense. “We talk about infrastructure that are used for the two uses and are vital in that new European horizon to increase security expense,” he said yesterday at the closure of the assembly of the assembly of the National Confederation of Construction (CNC).

Puente’s statements arrived after raising this same issue among their European colleagues in the EU Informal Council of Ministers of the EU held on Tuesday in Warsaw (Poland). «European security in the field of transport will be a central axis of discussions»he said.

Aware of the difficulty of quadling the public accounts with a millionaire injection in defense, and the political and social frictions that can cause the government, Puente admitted that including part of the railway investments as if they were for defense «It is also a way that citizens understand that, when talking about the defense budget, if we replace that term for the security, we will find ourselves It’s not just about weapons, troops, but also systems, infrastructure and of organization ». Although it will not be so easy to make this semantic change so that the EU accepts the true budgetary challenge that defense supposes.

In the closure of the CNC Assembly, Puente has valued The 1,000 million euros executed In Spain in 2024, a record figure since 2011. “Public investment in infrastructure helps us to be a more connected country, therefore less unequal and more competitive,” he said.

In addition, the Minister of Transportation has assured that his ministry resorts “very little” to orders to his own media, thus rejecting the criticism that the construction sector has been doing against administrations in recent years. He has done it after the president of the CNC, Pedro Fernández Alén, has asked end what has called an “abuse” of own means by the different public administrations, which believes that it is breaking free business competition and significantly reducing the number of companies that concur to tenders.