Ear pull of the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) to the Minister of Transport on the Passenger Transport Market on Autocar. The regulator had complained on Tuesday that Óscar Puente Desoigate the recommendations that made him more than half a year ago to promote competition in this sector, liberalizing the great motor routes, from 100 kilometers away, or improving and updating concessions sheets In the current administrative authorizations system. Months after doing them, the CNMC notes that “its” concrete proposals “has not yet been fulfilled.
The regulator has published on Tuesday a balance on the degree of compliance with the recommendations made last July to the Ministry of Transportation and Sustainable Mobility in a report in which, for example, he asked that The great motor routes will be opened to the competition As in other countries such as Germany, Italy, France or Portugal, in which several companies can operate them. Recommended “liberalizing the transport of bus travelers for distances greater than 100 kilometers” because the experience in these countries “has meant lower prices, increased connectivity and frequencies and a better quality of the service. “In Spain, however, a concession regime is maintained in which the company that acquires an administrative concession exploits them exclusively.
“From the publication of the study, There have been no effective changes in the liberalization of the sector“, confirms the CNMC on Tuesday, which also stated that in order to open the transport in the competition, a Independent regulatory body to settle “conflicts” Between conflicts between liberalized services and the subjects to public service obligations, reforming the regime of access to the stations or promoting the competitiveness of smaller operators.
Seven months later, he regrets that a recommendation that It is not binding But with whom he wants Maintain “on the agenda” the possibility of liberalizing transport in motor In Spain. But neither the Ministry, nor parties such as the PP nor the large companies in the sector, grouped in Cofebus seem to be for the work. Faced with these positions, they bet on the opening of the La CNMC sector and an alliance formed by smaller national companies and large international companies that last month delivered in the Ministry of Transport thousands of signatures for it.
“No effective changes have occurred In the liberalization of the sector, “says the CNMC, who recalls that the Sustainable Mobility Law provides for the possibility of liberalizing certain routes – in a somewhat decaffeinated way – but is still being processed in Congress and doubt that, without changes in this regard , the norm alone He would attend to his recommendation “very partially” and with an uncertain design.
Improvement in concessions
In the absence of the liberalization of this means of transport, the CNMC stated that The concessional system will improvecurrently under review and with the claim by the Ministry of modifying state lines, so that they have less stops and be more direct and fast, and delegate in the communities the creation of routes that unite their territories. The CNMC asked that the granting of the licenses to operate take into account the better economic offers compared to the “advantages of initial dealerships Faced with other bidders “that observes and renewing the expired concessions, which at the end of 2019 were 52% of the state and autonomic lines and that the extensions of the contracts are only of” exceptional character. “
In this case, the conclusion reached by the CNMC in its report released on Tuesday is that, although there is some mild improvement, the Failure to comply with its recommendations remains “generalized”, both by the Ministry in the state lines and of the communities, in those of autonomous concession.
Taking the 14 tenders to operate as many state and regional motor routes that have been made since July last year, it concludes that its recommendation D is partly fulfilledand divide them into lot to facilitate access to competition, but that some of them are “a considerable size”.
Also falters your recommendation that concessions They last less than 10 years Currently stipulated, because it verifies that the new tenders by the Ministry of the Junta de Andalucía are for a shorter duration – not in the Canary Islands – and that the contracts signed in the Basque and Canary country already do not foresee the possibility of extension, One of the elements that most rejects CNMC as contrary to free competition. He says that they should be “exceptional” but that in reality “the appeal to extensions remains generalized.”
“They have not been fulfilled” either their recommendations with regard to eliminating the obligations of mandatory minimal ascription of Flot and personalthat “they can suppose competitive advantages for the operator of the current concession” already “relax the requirements of technical and economic solvency required so that it does not entail the exclusion beforehand of potential bidders in the contest.”
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