MADRID – The bullet is through the church and after months and even years of discussions, the cabinet has decided that it is road pricing will be introduced in the Netherlands from 2030. The new system will replace the current motor vehicle tax, whereby drivers who drive more will also pay more. But what does road pricing mean for the Dutch who drive to Spain with their own transport such as a passenger car, camper, camper or motorcycle?
as it is looks like now and in the absence of more information, there will be one amount where it does not matter when you drive (rush hour or not) and where you drive. The amounts per kilometer are not yet known, but one of the goals is clearly to allow motorists to drive less. A calculation shows that someone who drives 80 km daily will cost 2.5 times more, while someone who drives 20 km daily will pay about half the price.
But the fact that it is not checked where you drive also has an influence on the road pricing for Spain’s own transport. It seems that every year the number of kilometers driven on which you have to pay tax is checked. The question is how this will work in practice. Does this happen with the APK? Then you would receive an annual arrears bill. But what about new cars, do you only get a bill after four years?
The problem with the road pricing system is that if you drive to Spain with the camper, camper, passenger car or motorcycle, these kilometers will be counted while you are actually driving abroad. It is therefore not a question of whether you use Dutch roads, but only that you drive, regardless of where that is. That is the downside of the road pricing system.
So someone who drives from the Netherlands through France to Spain will have thousands of extra kilometers on the counter and will ultimately pay much more tax. In addition, electric vehicles will also pay from 2030, now the EVs are excluded from road tax. There is a good chance that electric cars will pay less for the kilometers driven.
From 2030, driving to Spain with your own transport will become much more expensive for most Dutch people and therefore less interesting. There may be changes such as that the car is tracked via GPS and the kilometers driven outside the Netherlands do not count, but there are again many snags because of privacy.
Incidentally, there are also plans in Spain to introduce road pricing, but that would have to go through a system with cameras above the roads. But just like in the Netherlands, there are more uncertainties than certainties in Spain with regard to road pricing.
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