Companies and the Sustainable (?) Mobility Law

The Sustainability Law (Law 9/2025) is the umpteenth example of the diminishing technical quality of our legislation output. The institutional deterioration that we are suffering cannot fail to be noticed in the quality of the regulatory texts that are being approved, even if the powers of the consultative bodies and the normal parliamentary process are observed, which is not always the case. This generates a high level of legal uncertainty, hindering compliance with legal mandates and raises management costs. And a particular impact arises for companies having to operate in a notably worsened legal framework.

The first curious feature is that a period that had already started running, namely the time limit granted to companies for implementation of sustainable mobility to work plans, has oddly been reduced by half. This twenty-four month period under article 26 of the Sustainable Mobility Law, which was to expire in December 2027, has been shortened by Royal Decree-Law 7/2026, of March 20, 2026, to twelve months, and now ends in December 2026. This is an attack on legal certainty: a 24 month period, in which companies have legitimately been able to plan their action, has been shortened, after only three months, by 12 months, meaning that companies which, at the time of the amendment, had a further 21 months to adapt to the legal provisions, now have only nine months. And this has taken place by avoiding parliamentary debate, through a decree law, without hearing the affected parties and without providing reasonable and sufficient justification for such an unusual measure.

But let's turn to an analysis of the law, first of all, on which companies must have a sustainable mobility to work plan. The first point to note is that the obligation is imposed on workplaces, not on companies (article 26). A company with more than one workplace will have to implement a mobility plan for each workplace that exceeds the established thresholds and will not have to have a company mobility plan for workplaces falling below the threshold. What is that threshold? With prodigious precision, the law mentions "workplaces with more than 200" workers or "100 per shift". What does this mean? The threshold of 200 workers seems clear (the number for each includes only workers having their usual workplace there, and excludes cases of temporary mobility from other workplaces, travel, etc.). But the reference to 100 per shift is a source of confusion.

The law does not say when there are 200 workers or when there is a shift with 100 or more. To do so, it would have to say: "with 200 workers or with 100 or more in a shift". Or state that there must be at least one shift with 100 workers or more. Therefore, a company with shifts which falls below 200 workers in total, is not required to have a mobility plan, even if there are 100 workers on some shifts.

On the other hand, although it may seem obvious, it needs to be pointed out that there must be at least two shifts; one shift simply means no shifts. If there must be at least two and "each shift" (not a shift, or one shift), as the law says, must have at least 100 workers, obviously the workplace will have more than 200 workers, so the reference to shifts is superfluous. The clarity and precision of legal norms is conspicuous by its absence here. And the simplistic interpretation that the workplace must have 200 workers or a shift with 100 is unsustainable, in my view, because the rules imposing obligations on citizens should not need an expansive interpretation and because the result would go against the spirit of the law, in that it would be tantamount to lowering the legal threshold, whenever there are shifts, from 200 to 100 workers, which is obviously not the legislative mandate. Aside from the fact that it would lead to the paradoxical result that a workplace with 199 workers, without shifts and therefore with all employees working simultaneously (which is the relevant point for mobility purposes), would not have to have a mobility plan, whereas a workplace with far fewer workers in total, but with at least 100 in the same shift would.

Furthermore, mobility plans must be negotiated with the workers’ representatives. We are to understand that the negotiation process has to take place at the workplace and with the workers’ representatives for the workplace (works council or union branches), and it is stipulated that the negotiation process must take place with the unions where there are no workers’ representatives for the workplace, which will reproduce, and increase, the issues that have already arisen in relation to the negotiation of equality plans. It needs to be emphasized, however, negotiation that is required, not agreement. Nowhere is it specified that the plan must be agreed, so once the duty to negotiate has been fulfilled, it could be unilaterally approved by the company if an agreement is not reached.

In relation to this negotiation, the law amends (final provision three) article 85.1 of the Workers' Statute to include the duty to negotiate, in collective agreements, plans for sustainable mobility to work. However, the negotiation is to "promote the preparation of plans", not to directly address these plans; and, on the other hand, as the law clarifies, "with the scope and content provided for in Law 9/2025, on Sustainable Mobility". This means, apparently, that only workplace collective agreements in which the implementation of the mobility plan is mandatory will be affected by this duty to negotiate. However, a host of questions arise: should an agreement for a company, or of a group of companies, at which there are workplaces required to implement a mobility plan, also negotiate the measures to promote the preparation of such plans? And in sectoral agreements, is there such a duty to negotiate? Can these agreements provide for measures to promote the preparation of plans at workplaces falling within the scope of the legal duty? On the other hand, would it be possible to negotiate jointly, in the event of several workplaces sharing the same location, with the aim of establishing a kind of "joint plan"? The law does not go beyond saying that the appropriate coordination mechanisms must be promoted (by whom?) in these cases.

In any case, the legal reference to "promoting the preparation of sustainable mobility to work plans" shows, once again, that the negotiation of the actual content of these plans must be done at each affected workplace. And the plans do not have to be included in the content of the collective agreement. Many workplaces will not have their own collective agreement and yet they will have to negotiate a mobility plan in the applicable cases (which does not imply that they have to have their own collective agreement or that the plan must be formally included in a collective agreement).

Lastly, leaving aside other minor issues, the content of mobility plans is set out in article 26.3, in relation to article 28, which provides for a "hierarchy" among its various measures (a hierarchy that seems to alter or ignore the new formulation of paragraph four of article 85.1 of the Workers’ Statute): active mobility (on foot, by bicycle), collective public transport, high-occupancy mobility, less polluting private vehicles "or that involve less occupation of public space" – in other words, very small; a return to small is beautiful – (the measures are increased in the case of companies with more than 1,000 workers, in towns or cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants, anticipating a reduction in mobility at peak hours or during working hours. This last point is not very clear, because it is in working hours that there is usually less traffic). The fundamental question is whether the plan’s measures can be imposed or simply promoted or encouraged. Article 28 speaks about "encouraging or promoting", so the lawmakers do not seem to be in the mindset of imposing measures which in some cases could clash with individual freedom (especially if they are extended to third parties outside the employment relationship, such as suppliers or visitors).

A last rebuke on the obligation to register or communicate plans – always an occasion for exacerbating administrative interventionism – (articles 26.8 and 27) and on the announced regulatory role of the "mobility manager" (article 26.4. Prepare for the worst).