Spain is the most wasteful country of airport aid – HOME

Spain is the most wasteful country of airport aid – HOME

Spain is the most blatant case of squandering billions of European aid from 2000 to the extension of airports, according to a report 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 auditors referring to facilities primarily in structurally weak regions of Europe in its report published on Tuesday and advanced by the German weekly.

The worst situation is observed in Spain, the largest recipient of European aid in this matter, says the report. Thus, the new airport of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, with European support expanded from ten to 24 the number of gates and seven to fifteen baggage conveyors, had to close six of its doors . According to recent 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 of EU funds EUR 13.5 million to expand its terminal, in which a total of 85 million was invested and whose facilities are being used for landing and parking as government and private aircraft equipment. The auditors also cited the case of Ciudad Real airport, which cost one billion euros, which closed in 2012.

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 audit, seven of the twenty analyzed airports have losses and risks that are forced to close or be maintained in the long run by taxpayers. Also, only half of these twenty airports measures improving facilities, funded with European money, were really needed.

The multimillion dollar amounts for the 500 European airports were used on many occasions “without sense or reason,” the report said. Moreover, they add inspectors 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 .