Electric bicycles account for only about 1% of total bicycles sales in Portugal, in comparison to the European average of 8% or more than one third of the sales in some European countries. Following MUBi’s advocacy work at the Portuguese Parliamentary Groups and Government, the Portuguese National Government has created a fund in 2019 for financial incentives for the purchase of electric assisted bicycles (Pedelecs). For the first time.

This article was written by Rui Igreja, from MUBi - Associação pela Mobilidade Urbana em Bicicleta.

Financial incentives for the purchase of electric cars and motorcycles were already foreseen in previous Portuguese State Budgets, so MUBi carried out an extensive research of incentives for e-bikes existing in other European countries. This research greatly contributed to the advocacy actions for the inclusion of cycling in electric mobility public policies and, in particular, for the extension of the state incentives to electric assisted bicycles.

The gathered arguments were presented in meetings with the Parliamentary Groups prior to the discussion of the Portuguese State Budget for 2019. These included MUBi and Federação Portuguesa de Ciclismo (FPC) (Portuguese Cycling Federation) joint contribute to the National Programme of Investments 2030 and MUBi’s contribute to the programme Cyclable Portugal 2030. This documentation work was culminated with the joint position paper Electric Mobility for All authored by MUBi, the Portuguese bicycle industry association Abimota, FPC and the environmental NGO Zero. MUBi also took the issue several times to the media, giving cycling as a regular mode of transportation a high coverage in the press.

A great contribution to cycling

During the discussion of the State Budget, 3 of the 7 Parliamentary Groups came forward with proposals for financial incentives for the purchase of electric bicycles, with 2 of them publicly stating they had assured the Government agreement. These two proposals were voted favourably, and the incentive was included in the State Budget for 2019. Already in March of this year, the Government published the terms and the regulation of the incentive programme, which includes a subsidy of 250 EUR for 1,000 electric assisted bicycles for urban use in 2019.

Meaning that MUBi, together with a large group of partners and stakeholders, achieved a return of 250,000 EUR for cycling in 2019.

This also opens the door for other future public financial and/or fiscal purchase subsidies programmes or bicycle commuting incentives schemes. Besides its direct goal, with this campaign MUBi got closer to the national decision makers, made them more aware of cycling and some of its most relevant issues, and strengthened ties with other Portuguese bicycle organizations.

Snowball effect

Furthermore, Lisbon has been selected to host Velo-city 2021. BYCS within its Bicycle Mayor and Leaders Program has recently appointed a bicycle mayor in Lisbon for the first time in Portugal, Ana Pereira, a long time cycling advocate and one of the founders of MUBi. The Portuguese Government made public a national investment of 300mln EUR for the next 10 years in interurban cycling infrastructures. And very recently, announced the National Strategy for Active Mobility with the aims of in the next decade increasing cycling infrastructure to 10,000 km, reducing road accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists by 50%, and increasing the country cycling modal share from 0.5% to the actual European average of 7.5%. Therefore, Portugal is setting itself in a good position to start considering seriously cycling as a healthy, social, sustainable and economical mode of transportation.

At the same time Portugal needs now, as never before, a strong cycling advocacy capable of dealing with these new high level challenges, in order to help guarantee that policies and investments go in the right direction and hopefully that Portugal might reach European cycling levels within the next decade and reap its enormous benefits.