Law 2/2011, of March 4, on the Sustainable Economy.

Head of State

"BOE" No. 55, of March 5, 2011

Reference: BOE-A-2011-4117

INDEX

Preamble ................................................................... 3

PRELIMINARY TITLE ........................................................... 10

TITLE I. Improvement of the Economic Environment ............................................... 11

CHAPTER I. Improvement of Regulatory Quality ....................................... 11

CHAPTER II. Regulatory Bodies .............................................. 12

Section 1. General Provisions on Regulatory Bodies......................... 12

Section 2. Subject Matter of Regulatory Bodies .................................... 12

Section 3. Management Bodies of Regulatory Bodies ........................ 12

Section 4. Staff of Regulatory Bodies .................................. 12

Section 5. Transparency and Social Responsibility of Regulatory Bodies ............ 13

Section 6. Collaboration and Cooperation Mechanisms of Regulatory Bodies ......... 13

Section 7. Rules regarding the establishment and calculation of the percentage, tax rates and fees of the regulatory bodies and the Competition Commission, as well as for their indebtedness ........................................................... 13

CHAPTER III. Financial Markets ................................................ 13

Section 1. Transparency and Corporate Governance....................................... 13

Section 2. Insurance and Pension Funds Markets .................................. 14

Section 3. Mechanisms for the Protection of Financial Services Clients .................... 15

CHAPTER IV. Financial Sustainability of the Public Sector ................................... 15

CHAPTER V. Public Procurement and Public-Private Collaboration............................. 18

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CHAPTER VI. Corporate Social Responsibility .................................... 18

TITLE II. Competitiveness ......................................................... 19

CHAPTER I. Administrative Simplification ............................................. 19

Section 1. Expansion of the Scope of Positive Silence ................................ 19

Section 2. Cases of Local Activity Licenses.............................. 19

CHAPTER II. Simplification in the Taxation Regime ................................... 20

CHAPTER III. On Cadastral Activity ............................................... 22

CHAPTER IV. Telecommunications and the Information Society.............................. 23

CHAPTER V. Science and Innovation ................................................. 24

Section 1. Transfer of Results in Research Activity.......................... 24

Section 2. Promotion of Industrial Property Rights.............................. 25

Section 3. Training, Research and Transfer of Results in the University System .......... 25

Section 4. Taxation of Research, Development and Technological Innovation Activities ......... 28

CHAPTER VI. Internationalization ................................................. 29

CHAPTER VII. Vocational Training ............................................... 31

TITLE III. Environmental Sustainability .............................................. 33

CHAPTER I. Sustainable Energy Model ............................................ 33

CHAPTER II. Emission Reduction ............................................... 37

CHAPTER III. Transport and Sustainable Mobility ......................................... 40

Section 1. Regulation of Transport .............................................. 40

Section 2. Efficient Planning and Management of Transport Infrastructure and Services ....... 42

Section 3. Sustainable Mobility.................................................. 42

CHAPTER IV. Rehabilitation and Housing .............................................. 43

TITLE IV. Instruments for the Application and Evaluation of the Sustainable Economy Law ............... 43

Additional Provisions ......................................................... 44

Transitory Provisions ......................................................... 52

Repealing Provisions ........................................................ 54

Final Provisions ............................................................ 54

ANNEX TO ADDITIONAL PROVISION SIXTH. Data for the calculation of the costs of use of road transport vehicles during their useful life.................................... 170

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Last modification: December 4, 2025

PREAMBLE

I

The international financial and economic crisis, the most serious in many decades, has also affected the Spanish economy with intensity, interrupting the long period of continuous growth experienced by it for three decades.

In our country, the crisis has had the singular effect of precipitating with unusual abruptness the adjustment of the construction sector that had begun in 2007. As a consequence of this, and being this a sector very intensive in labor, there has been a strong increase in unemployment in a very short period of time.

In line with the patterns adopted by the group of countries of the so-called G20 and with the decisions of the European Union, the Government has promoted, in the first place, a set of actions aimed at strengthening our financial system and containing the sharp drop in activity, mitigating its consequences both in the economic and social spheres. This set of actions has integrated the Spanish Plan for the Stimulus of the Economy and Employment, the Plan E, which has involved a very considerable fiscal effort.

Parallel to this, the Executive has drawn up a Strategy for the recovery of the Spanish economy that rests on the conviction, reaffirmed by the own incidence of the crisis in our country, that it is necessary to accelerate the renewal of the productive model that was put into operation in 2004.

This new step in the modernization of the Spanish economy responds to the challenge of strengthening the most solid and stable elements of our productive model. With this, the excessive dependence on a few sectors subject to the conjuncture can be reduced, and, on the contrary, the possibilities opened up by the advance of new activities that offer greater stability in their development are maximized, especially as regards the generation and maintenance of employment and that, for this same reason, require a higher qualification in their workers. Activities, in addition, in which Spanish companies have become heavily involved and have already reached positions of international leadership. That is the Sustainable Economy that this Law seeks to promote.

The Strategy for a Sustainable Economy, approved by the Council of Ministers in November 2009, articulates, thus, an ambitious and demanding program of reforms, which deepens in the direction of some of the strategic options adopted since the previous Legislature, such as the priority given to the increase in investment in research, development and innovation, or to the promotion of activities related to clean energies and energy savings; or already in this Legislature, within the Plan E itself, to the rigorous transposition of the Services Directive.

The Strategy includes a varied list of legislative, regulatory and administrative initiatives, as well as the promotion of reforms in specific areas of the Spanish economy such as labor or the Commission of the Pact of Toledo. All of them aim to serve a new growth, a balanced, lasting growth: sustainable. Sustainable in three senses: economically, that is, increasingly solid, based on the improvement of competitiveness, innovation and training; environmentally, which makes the essential rational management of natural resources also an opportunity to promote new activities and new jobs; and socially sustainable, as promoter and guarantor of equality of opportunity and social cohesion.

This Sustainable Economy Law is one of the most important pieces of the Strategy since it addresses, transversally and with structural scope, many of the changes that, with the rank of law, are necessary to incentivize and accelerate the development of a more competitive, more innovative economy, capable both of renewing traditional productive sectors and of opening decisively to new activities demanding stable and quality jobs.

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The Law is structured in a Preliminary Title, where its object, the concept of sustainable economy and the resulting principles of action of the public authorities are defined, and in four Titles that contain the set of reforms to promote the sustainability of the Spanish economy. The first of them focuses on the improvement of the economic environment, understood as such the actions of the public sector that determine the context of development of the economy; Title II introduces a series of novelties directly linked to the promotion of the competitiveness of the Spanish economic model, eliminating administrative and tax obstacles, acting specifically on three axes of improvement of the competitiveness of Spanish companies: the development of the information society, a new framework of relationship with the R&D+i system and an important reform of the vocational training system, which is carried out through this Law and a complementary Organic Law, which makes the necessary organic modifications in the current provisions. Title III contains a series of reforms that, from environmental sustainability, affect the central areas of the economic model: the sustainability of the energy model, the reduction of emissions, sustainable transport and mobility, and, especially relevant in the Spanish case, the promotion of the housing sector from the perspective of rehabilitation. Apart from the content of the Law are the reforms corresponding to social sustainability, essentially in matters of employment and social security, since the specific requirements of agreement in these areas, within the framework of Social Dialogue and the Pact of Toledo, respectively, advise processing the proposals in differentiated texts and procedures. Title IV, finally, contains the instruments for the application and evaluation of the Sustainable Economy Law. The Law has twenty additional provisions, nine transitory, sixty final and one repealing provision.

II

The Preliminary Title defines the object of the Law, the concept of sustainable economy, and collects a series of principles of action of the public authorities that are at the base of their action on the model of economic growth and its development, both through the obligation to promote certain purposes in their own action and that of individuals, from savings and energy efficiency, the promotion of clean energies and their R&D+i to the rationalization of residential construction, as well as through duties to maintain an efficient public environment for economic development, to which the principles of improvement of competitiveness or stability of public finances clearly point.

III

Title I concentrates the reforms in the public sector that are oriented to guarantee an efficient economic environment and support the competitiveness of the Spanish economy. In coherence with that general purpose, the Title adopts reforms that are projected on the action of all Public Administrations, in exercise of the state competencies on common administrative procedure and on general economic ordering.

Thus, Chapter I, relating to the improvement of regulatory quality, collects the principles of good regulation applicable to normative initiatives and the instruments for regulatory improvement, with special attention to transparency and prior and subsequent evaluation of such initiatives and the formalization of instruments for that purpose: the new periodic reports on regulatory improvement actions and the work of the Committee for the Improvement of the Regulation of Service Activities.

Chapter II addresses the reform of regulatory bodies, introducing for the first time in our legal system a horizontal framework, common to all of them, which assumes their characteristics of independence, from the Government and from the corresponding sector, and their action in accordance with principles of efficiency and transparency. Thus, the number of members of the Councils is reduced in order to improve the governance of the institutions, and new accountability mechanisms are established, through the appearance of the proposing Minister and of the candidates for President and Councilors of the regulatory body before Parliament and the elaboration of a sectoral economic report and an action plan of the body. The Law itself determines its scope of application to the National Energy Commission, the Commission for the Market of Telecommunications and the National Postal Sector Commission, declaring applicable a good part of its provisions to the National Competition Commission. For now, the bodies linked to the financial scope are outside this common framework, which must adapt to the rules resulting from the discussion process on their regime that is currently developing in the international and European scope.

Chapter III includes the measures for the reform of the financial market, in the line established by international agreements on increasing transparency and improving corporate governance, with the corresponding modification of Law 24/1988, of July 28, on the Securities Market so that listed companies make available to shareholders a report on remuneration that will be approved in the General Meeting, and of Law 13/1985, of May 25, on investment coefficients, own resources and information obligations of financial intermediaries and other norms of the financial system, which will allow the Bank of Spain to demand from credit entities remuneration policies coherent with a prudent and effective risk management. As mechanisms for the protection of users of financial services and in order to ensure the practice of responsible credit, credit entities must evaluate the solvency of the borrower, while increasing the information provided on the financial and banking products offered to him.

The compliance with these measures aimed at increasing the transparency of the entities operating in the financial markets may involve the processing of personal data. In addition to guaranteeing compliance in matters of data protection by the intervention of the National Securities Market Commission and, if applicable, the Bank of Spain in said publication, it should be noted that these initiatives are promoted following, on the one hand, the Recommendation of the European Commission that complements Recommendations 2004/913/EC and 2005/162/EC as regards the remuneration system of the directors of companies listed on the stock exchange, published on April 30, 2009; and, on the other hand, the conclusions of international economic forums such as the G-20.

In Section 2 of Chapter III, measures for the reform of the insurance and pension funds markets are included to improve the protection of the rights of the insured and to promote the development of economic activity in this sector through transparency in the mediation of insurance and reinsurance, simplify and expedite procedures and increase the protection of savers and policyholders; for this purpose, Law 26/2006, of July 17, on the mediation of private insurance and reinsurance and the Consolidated Text of the Law on the regulation of pension plans and funds, approved by Legislative Royal Decree 1/2002, of November 29, and the Consolidated Text of the Law on the ordering and supervision of private insurance, approved by Legislative Royal Decree 6/2004, of October 29, are modified.

In Section 3 of Chapter III, the mechanisms for the protection of financial services clients are developed, allowing the action of the complaint services of the financial supervisors through the modification of Law 44/2002, of November 22, on Measures for the Reform of the Financial System.

Chapter IV introduces principles of action, rules and sanction and evaluation mechanisms that allow contributing to the achievement of the financial sustainability of the public sector, as an element of support for the solidity of the productive model that, after the effects of the crisis, needs a special boost. These measures include the application by Public Administrations of policies of rationalization and containment of spending, in accordance with the objectives of budgetary stability. Within the framework of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council and the National Commission of Local Administration, the General State Administration will inform the Autonomous Communities and Local Entities of the measures adopted. The Law regulates a specific instrument of special relevance in the scope of the General State Administration, the Austerity Plan, which allows maintaining budgetary equilibrium in accordance with budgetary stability regulations, and which may ultimately lead to the rationalization of the structures of the General State Administration and the public business sector.

The Law contains a specific instrument for ensuring information and transparency in matters of budgetary discipline of Local Entities, as a fundamental element for the coordination of Public Treasuries in full respect of their autonomy, since the Ministry of Economy and Finance is enabled to, under certain conditions, retain the amount of the monthly payments on account of the participation in State taxes that correspond to it, when Local Entities fail to comply with the obligation to send the settlement of their respective budgets of each year, modifying for this purpose the Consolidated Text of the Law Regulating Local Treasuries, approved by Legislative Royal Decree 2/2004, of March 5.

In Chapter V, efficiency in public procurement and public-private collaboration is promoted, as fundamental elements of relationship between the Public Administration and the business fabric and, at the same time, as areas where the link to economic sustainability parameters must be strengthened. The adoption of these measures involves the reform of Law 30/2007, of October 30, on Public Sector Contracts, modified in the sixteenth final provision. In particular, the regulations on modifications of works are completely modified, in accordance with the practices recommended by the European Union, and taking into account, especially, the position manifested by the Commission on modifications not foreseen in the bidding documents and on the character of substantial alteration of those that exceed by more than 10 percent the initial price of the contract. Likewise, greater transparency of information in public procurement is established, research and development contracts are encouraged, and the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises in public procurement is promoted. In addition, access to contractual information is centralized in an electronic platform on which all information related to bids called by the state public sector will be disseminated. Likewise, administrative procedures in contracting processes are simplified, decreasing the cost for businessmen involved in participating in public contract award procedures. Specific rules are established for the so-called "pre-commercial procurement", considered by the European Commission as an indispensable instrument to promote innovation and provide quality and sustainable public services, allowing greater involvement of public contracting in the implementation of research, development and innovation policy. Finally, certain provisions are included that complete the legal regime of contractual and institutional formulas of collaboration between the public sector and the private sector, to promote these figures and facilitate their use by the public sector, while regulating the terms in which the award winners of these contracts can compete in the capital markets to obtain financing for their execution.

Chapter VI is dedicated to the promotion of corporate social responsibility, introducing the adoption of a set of indicators for self-evaluation in this matter that will facilitate, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, the development of this business area.

IV

Title II collects the reforms that the Law carries out with the purpose of directly affecting the improvement of the competitiveness of the Spanish economic fabric. In this way, the Sustainable Economy Law comes to continue the effort of removal of administrative obstacles started with the norms of transposition of the Services Directive, but, in addition, assumes the need to affect other aspects that are currently negative for the situation of our economy or that are susceptible of simplification and expediting.

Along with this expediting perspective, the Law aims to reinforce three fundamental axes in the competitiveness of Spanish economic agents: the development of the information society, the link with R&D+i actions and the training of our workers, with special attention to the vocational training system.

Chapter I introduces measures of administrative simplification in two areas. First, in Section 1 of Chapter I, the obligation is established for the Government and the Autonomous Communities to promote normative reforms to expand the scope of application of positive administrative silence. In Section 2, Law 7/1985, of April 2, on Bases of Local Regime, is modified to restrict the possibility of requiring licenses for those activities in which there are imperative reasons of general interest, linked to the protection of public health or safety, the environment or historical-artistic heritage. Local Treasuries are enabled, through the reform of the Legislative Royal Decree 2/2004, of March 5, by which the Consolidated Text of the Law Regulating Local Treasuries is approved, to...

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