Sunday, December 14, 2014

Spain, the biggest spender of airport EU aid – Expansión.com

Spain, the biggest spender of airport EU aid – Expansión.com

Spain is the most blatant case of squandering billions of European aid from 2000 to the expansion of airports, denounced in a report the European Court of Auditors (UE) quoted by the weekly Der Spiegel.

“too many airports and projects were promoted in many cases were oversized” say the auditors referring to facilities primarily in structurally weak regions of Europe in its report published on Tuesday and today the weekly Der Spiegel ahead.

The worst situation is observed in Spain, the largest recipient of European aid in this matter, says the report.

So, the new Airport terminal Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands, with European support expanded from ten to 24 the number of gates and seven to fifteen of baggage carousels, had to close six of its doors.

According to the latest estimates, the airport will not be ready to use the full capacity until 2030 despite good tourist numbers.

Another case is criticized Cordoba Airport (south ), which received funds from the EU EUR 13.5 million to expand its terminal, in which a total of 85 million euros was invested and whose facilities are being used for landing and parking as government aircraft and appliances private.

Despite its ultra runway, the number of passengers fell by half between 2009 and 2013 to 130 weekly travelers.

The auditors also cited the case of Ciudad Real airport, which cost one billion euros and closed in 2012.

unprovable Benefits In general, the document notes that the benefits for travelers in many places “are not measurable and demonstrable” despite investments for improving European airports since 2000 totaling 4,500 million euros.

According to the auditors, Seven airports have analyzed twenty losses and risks that are forced to close or be maintained in the long run by taxpayers.

Also, only half of these twenty airports improvement measures facilities, funded with European money, they were really necessary. The multimillion dollar amounts for the 500 European airports was used many times without sense or reason, the report said.

In addition, inspectors added in four of the five countries analyzed -Spain, Italy, Greece and Estonia there was not even a national plan for long term airport, so the expansion of facilities was carried out without any coordination.

Ghost Airports like Castellón (east of Spain ) exist throughout Europe, but the fault is not only politicians province of grandeur, but also of a European policy totally wrong and “poorly supervised” subsidies, concludes the document.

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