The new Spanish Sustainable Mobility Act (Law 9/2025) establishes strict employer obligations for workplace commuting. Crucially, qualifying companies must draft, negotiate, and implement a Sustainable Mobility Plan.
The Act does not apply universally to all businesses operating in Spain. Instead, its scope depends primarily on the number of employees assigned to each workplace.
As a preliminary point, it is important to understand that the Sustainable Mobility Act pursues several environmental objectives, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants. To achieve these goals, the Spanish legislator has focused on one of the main sources of daily emissions: employee commuting.
Consequently, sustainability has become not only an environmental issue but also a matter of employment law compliance. For certain employers, promoting sustainable commuting arrangements now forms part of their organisational and legal obligations.
Which Employers Must Implement a Sustainable Mobility Plan?
Not every employer operating in Spain will be required to adopt a Sustainable Mobility Plan. The Act sets the scope based on the number of employees assigned to each workplace, rather than the company’s workforce as a whole.
A Sustainable Mobility Plan is mandatory for workplaces employing:
- Over 200 employees, or
- 100 employees per shift,
provided that the relevant premises constitute the employees’ usual place of work.
Accordingly, companies must not evaluate compliance solely at the corporate level. Businesses operating multiple offices, factories, or warehouses must analyse each establishment individually, counting the employees who regularly work at each site.
This distinction is particularly relevant for companies with multiple business sites, shift-based operations or geographically dispersed organisational structures.
What Is a Sustainable Mobility Plan?
Upon confirming applicability, companies must outline the specific requirements for implementing their Sustainable Mobility Plan.
The purpose of the plan is to introduce practical mobility measures that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality. To do so, employers must first assess how employees currently travel to work before identifying realistic alternatives that promote more sustainable, efficient and safer forms of transport.
The Act does not impose a single mandatory model. Instead, it provides a framework allowing each employer to design measures that reflect the operational characteristics of its business and workforce.
The law explicitly highlights several key measures, including:
- Promoting active mobility, including walking, cycling and other sustainable transport alternatives
- Encouraging the use of public transport and collective transport solutions
- Promoting low-emission mobility
- Implementing shared and collaborative mobility initiatives, including car-sharing schemes
- Providing charging infrastructure and facilities for zero-emission vehicles;
- Encouraging remote working where compatible with the employee’s role
- Offering public transport cards benefiting from the tax regime established under the Spanish Personal Income Tax Act 35/2006 (a tax-efficient employee benefit available under Spanish legislation).
These measures do not have to be implemented uniformly across every workplace. Instead, employers should adapt their Sustainable Mobility Plan to the specific circumstances of each site, considering factors such as its geographical location, available transport infrastructure, working time arrangements and the practical needs of the workforce.
Additional Requirements for High-Occupancy Workplaces
The Sustainable Mobility Act also establishes additional obligations for workplaces with particularly high occupancy levels.
The law classifies any facility with over 1,000 employees in a city or metropolitan area of 500,000+ inhabitants as a high-occupancy workplace.
In these scenarios, employers must execute specific measures to ease traffic congestion during peak commuting hours and limit unnecessary travel during the workday.
Negotiating the Sustainable Mobility Plan with Employee Representatives
Companies must formally negotiate the Sustainable Mobility Plan with employee representatives before implementation. This requirement reinforces the employment law dimension of the new legislation, as the plan is not merely an environmental initiative but also an organisational measure affecting working conditions and employee mobility.
If no statutory employee representatives exist, the employer must establish a negotiating committee comprising representatives of the company, the workforce and the most representative trade unions in the relevant sector, as required by the Sustainable Mobility Act.
For international companies operating in Spain, this requirement highlights the importance of complying not only with environmental regulations but also with Spain’s mandatory employee consultation and collective bargaining framework.
Deadline for Implementing a Sustainable Mobility Plan
Companies falling within the scope of the Act must negotiate, approve and implement their Sustainable Mobility Plan within 12 months from the date on which the legislation entered into force.
With Law 9/2025 in effect as of 5 December 2025, covered employers must fully negotiate and implement their Sustainable Mobility Plan by 5 December 2026.
Given the work involved, employers should begin the process well in advance. Preparing a compliant plan may require:
- Gathering data on employees’ commuting patterns
- Assessing the company’s current mobility arrangements
- Preparing an internal mobility assessment
- Designing appropriate sustainable mobility measures
- Negotiating the plan with employee representatives
- Completing any communications or filings required by the competent public authorities.
Implementing the plan will require close coordination across Human Resources, Legal, Operations, Sustainability, and Facilities Management teams.
Monitoring and Reviewing the Sustainable Mobility Plan
Approving the Sustainable Mobility Plan marks only the beginning of a company’s ongoing compliance obligations.
Under the Sustainable Mobility Act, employers must review the plan two years after approval and prepare a monitoring report evaluating the active measures.
Additionally, companies must notify the competent public authority of their first Sustainable Mobility Plan within three months of approval (or from the Act’s effective date, where applicable).
Thereafter, employers must carry out biennial monitoring and produce a report assessing the level of implementation of the plan and the effectiveness of the measures introduced.
Through this review, management evaluates whether existing measures meet their goals or if the company needs to deploy additional initiatives to enhance green commuting and cut workforce emissions.
Conclusion
The Sustainable Mobility Act triggers plan obligations only when a workplace reaches statutory thresholds: employing over 200 staff members total or 100 staff members per shift.
Following the required negotiation with employee representatives—or, where appropriate, the negotiating committee established under Spanish law—employers must adopt practical mobility measures tailored to the operational characteristics of each workplace.
This new obligation marks another significant step toward integrating sustainability into Spanish employment law. Companies operating in Spain must immediately assess whether this legislation applies to them, identify required compliance measures, and launch negotiations and implementation as early as possible.
For international businesses with Spanish subsidiaries or operations, early legal advice can help ensure compliance with both the environmental objectives of the legislation and the employment law requirements governing consultation, collective bargaining and workplace organisation.
Frequently Asqued Questions
A Sustainable Mobility Plan is mandatory for workplaces employing over 200 employees or 100 employees per shift, provided that the premises constitute the employees’ usual place of work. Employers must calculate compliance thresholds for each specific workplace rather than globally across the company.
The law targets commuting emissions and urban air pollution by pushing cleaner transport alternatives: public transit, active commuting, shared rides, and work-from-home options.
Yes. Spanish law requires employers to negotiate the plan with employee representatives before implementation. If staff lack statutory representatives, workers and employers must form a negotiating committee according to Spanish labour law.
A Sustainable Mobility Plan may include measures such as promoting public transport, active mobility, cycling, car-sharing schemes, low-emission vehicles, electric vehicle charging points, remote working arrangements and tax-efficient public transport benefits, among other initiatives adapted to each workplace.
Affected companies must negotiate, approve, and launch their Sustainable Mobility Plan by 5 December 2026, exactly one year after the Act took effect.
Yes. Two years post-approval, management must review the plan and produce a biennial progress report evaluating active measures against legal requirements.
Does your business need to comply with Spain’s new Sustainable Mobility obligations?
We advise Spanish and international companies on every stage of the implementation process, including determining whether the legislation applies to your business, negotiating with employee representatives and preparing Sustainable Mobility Plans tailored to your operational needs and fully compliant with Spanish employment law.
