All the aid that the Government hoped to approve with the Omnibus Decree that had to pass the filter of the Council of Deputies has fallen. With 177 votes against added by the Popular Party, Junts and Vox, the Government was not enough the 171 votes in favor that he obtained to carry out his varied package of measures.
Among the measures that this Omnibus Decree was found pension increase but also aid for public transport and, consequently, free or reduced transport passes and multi-trip tickets that can no longer be purchased. Only those that were purchased before January 23, 2025 or those of a regional nature whose town councils or autonomous communities maintain.
And among those measures was also the extension of the MOVES III Planaid for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and the discount of up to 3,000 euros in the income tax return that can be deducted for the purchase of a car with these characteristics.
The fall of some key aid
The extension of the MOVES III Plan and the aid itself for the purchase of electric cars has been a huge headache for the Government in the last year.
In February 2024Pedro Sánchez, President of the Government, assured in a Forum organized by ANFAC that they would review the MOVES III Plan “in the coming weeks.” Shortly after, Héctor Gómez, Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, assured that they were “aware that the MOVES Plan has its strengths and weaknesses. From a temporal point of view, making the aid more flexible so that charged when the vehicle is purchased “It is a step that we are going to take, that is the commitment.”
All MOVES III PLAN aid that is no longer active
However, months later the situation had not changed. On the first day since the deadline to buy an electric car with aid expires (July 1, 2024), The Government extended this subsidy again, maintaining the same conditions. Until December 31, 2024, it was possible to buy an electric car with aid that starts at 4,500 euros and that in the best of cases reaches 7,000 euros in discounts if a vehicle that is more than seven years old is scrapped.
Months later, as in trapped in timetwo weeks before the end of 2024 and, with it, the MOVES III Plan and its aid, we found ourselves in the same situation again: not knowing what would happen to the program. Just a few days later, on December 26, the Government confirmed that we would have Plan MOVES III until June 30, 2025 but that, again, the conditions were exactly the same.
Now, with just over 20 days of the year 2025 already gone, anyone who has not had their request to receive purchase aid under the umbrella of the MOVES III Plan You may find yourself with the unpleasant news that you probably won’t receive it. Without support for the Omnibus Decree in which this extension that was already active was contemplated, everything remains up in the air.
We do not know if, if a specific measure is approved in Congress (as the Popular Party has requested for an increase in pensions or transport aid), the delivery of aid will be retroactive to all those who formalized the request before its fall. but they did not have approval from the institutions.
The news is terrible for the electric car in Spain. The first months of the year always They tend to be a little weaker in salesthe market accepting the last registrations from the previous year, and the electric car is growing but at a very slow pace. In 2024 it grew by 4.21% but its market share remains at 5.36% which represents a technical tie with the figure for 2023 (5.56%).
When talking about the reasons for this stagnation, the MOVES III Plan continues to be pointed out as one of the big problems. In some cases The wait to receive aid has been up to three years and in July 2024 we learned that they had been granted aid worth 250 million euros for which there was no money because the fund had already been exhausted.
The news coming from neighboring countries is not too optimistic either. In Germany, the largest electric car market in Europe, it has fallen by 27.4% according to ACEA data in his first year without aid for the purchase of electric cars. In Portugal, where purchase aid is direct when purchasing a car, the electric market share is close to 20%.
To alleviate this situation and encourage buyers, it has been the manufacturers themselves who are providing a type of purchase aid to the new owners. To encourage sales, they show the car with 7,000 euros discount that, in reality, It is an interest-free loan. to be returned a few months later when (it is hoped) the new buyer has received the aid.
The electric car market is having a hard time taking off in Spain. The lack of purchase aid means new stones on a very unpaved road. It remains to be seen what measures the Government takes, if it manages to carry out a new extension of a plan that requires direct aid for purchases or if, on the contrary, we are facing months of absence of government support.
What we do know is that in Germany manufacturers trusted in a return to aid and They launched generous discounts in the first months after their subsidies fell. And, despite everything, it hasn’t worked.
Photo | renault
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