JEFATURA CENTRAL DE TRAFICO

Their core work

JEFATURA CENTRAL DE TRAFICO — operating as Spain's Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT) — is the national public authority responsible for road traffic regulation, vehicle registration, driver licensing, and road safety enforcement across Spain. In EU research projects, DGT contributes regulatory expertise, real-world road infrastructure access, and policy-implementation authority that technology developers cannot replicate. Their value in a consortium is not technical development but validation: they provide access to live road corridors, cross-border regulatory frameworks, and the institutional mandate to pilot new mobility concepts at national scale. More recently, they have extended this regulatory remit into unmanned airspace, acting as a domain authority for drone traffic management and U-space policy testing.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

DGT entered H2020 through the lens of connected and automated road vehicles — specifically the 5G-enabled cross-border corridor use case — reflecting Spain's investment in smart motorway infrastructure in the 2018 period. By 2020, their participation had pivoted sharply toward aerial mobility: drones, swarm management, and the nascent U-space regulatory framework, indicating that DGT's remit was formally expanding beyond roads into low-altitude airspace governance. The trajectory suggests a deliberate institutional repositioning from road traffic authority to a broader multimodal mobility regulator, tracking the EU's own policy direction under EASA and the U-space regulation that came into force in 2023.

DGT is heading toward multimodal traffic authority — a partner to seek out for any project requiring regulatory access, pilot authorization, or policy validation in both road automation and low-altitude drone operations in Spain.

How they like to work

DGT participates exclusively as a consortium partner, never as coordinator — consistent with a public authority that contributes regulatory access and validation capacity rather than leading technical research. Both of their projects were large-scale consortia (5G-MOBIX alone involved dozens of partners across 15 countries), suggesting they are comfortable operating within complex multi-partner structures. They function as an institutional anchor: their involvement signals real-world relevance to evaluators, but they are not the engine driving the technical agenda.

DGT has worked with 77 unique consortium partners across 15 countries through just two projects, reflecting the large pan-European consortia typical of 5G and transport innovation actions. Their network is broad but shallow — wide geographic reach without repeated partner relationships, given the small project count.

What sets them apart

DGT is Spain's only national traffic authority, which means no other Spanish organization can offer the same combination of regulatory mandate, nationwide road infrastructure access, and legal authority to authorize cross-border automated vehicle or drone trials. For any consortium targeting the Spanish market or needing a southern European regulatory anchor in transport or urban air mobility, DGT is the natural choice. Their dual presence in both road automation and U-space makes them unusually positioned for projects that straddle ground and air mobility.

Highlights from their portfolio

• 5G-MOBIX
  Largest project by funding (EUR 107,625) and the first to embed DGT in a major pan-European 5G corridor trial, establishing their role in connected automated mobility at scale.
• LABYRINTH
  Marks DGT's strategic entry into drone and U-space regulation — an unusual and forward-looking move for a traditional road traffic authority, signaling institutional expansion into aerial mobility governance.