Puente offers the capacity and experience of Spanish companies to develop Norway's infrastructures

The Minister for Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, greets to his Norwegian counterpart, Jon-Ivar Nygård

The Minister for Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, highlighted in Oslo the great technical capacity, solvency and international experience of Spanish companies to tackle any transport infrastructure project. An expertise it has offered to the Norwegian government for the development of its Transport Plan 2025-2036, which focuses on sustainability, digitalisation and national security of roads, rail, ports and airports.

"Spanish companies are at the forefront of technology and offer unquestionable guarantees. They are first-class partners in the entire transport chain and have a wealth of international experience. For all these reasons, I would like to offer Norway the Spanish know-how", said the minister during his speech at the ICEX Transport Infrastructure Forum, held today in the Norwegian capital.

In this regard, during his meeting with the Norwegian Minister for Transport, Jon-Ivar Nygård, the minister conveyed that Spanish companies have the full support of the Government of Spain and stressed the importance of reinforcing the collaboration between the two countries in order to move forward in the decarbonisation of transport and the promotion of the railway.

They also discussed the presence of Spanish companies in Norway, where they are already involved in innovative projects such as the new Fornebu metro station, and their interest in continuing to be present to collaborate in the development of the country's Transport Plan. The minister expressed his confidence that both countries will witness a new revival of opportunities for collaboration between Spanish and Norwegian companies in the field of infrastructures, where they share objectives and challenges.

The minister used his speech at the Forum organised by ICEX to list these challenges and to stress the need to act on them through bilateral and multilateral collaboration and to offer certainty in the plans, which must place sustainability and the mobility needs of citizens and companies at the centre.

Thus, the challenges shared by Spain and Norway are decarbonisation, the irruption of new technologies and the unequal distribution of the population across the territory. Both countries are therefore committed to:

• Decarbonisation of transport linked to economic growth.
• Integrating climate variables into the design, construction, management and maintenance of infrastructures, with the aim of improving their resilience.
• Considering the social and territorial aspect of transport, orienting policies towards improving and optimising the use of infrastructures, placing the mobility needs of citizens at the centre.

Spain, leader in the railway sector

Óscar Puente underlined the important role of planning, public investment and Spanish companies in making Spain a world leader in the transport and infrastructure sector, especially in the railway sector.

Thus, among the objectives pursued by the Ministry, is transforming the railway into the backbone of the transport system and making progress in the preservation and improvement of a very safe and high-performance road network that connects all our territory.

"The best example of the success of the Spanish model is our high speed. Today we have a network that is the first in Europe in terms of number of kilometres (4,000) and the second longest in the world. In 5-7 years, 90% of the population will be connected by high speed. We are a world example in the development of railway technology", said the minister during his speech.

He also referred to the need to develop intermodality to the maximum, with rail-port connections, rail motorways or the linking of our main airports to the high-speed network, to electrify and digitalise our ports, or to continue developing a first-class airport network and promoting more sustainable air transport through the SAFs.

Non official translation