By Andrew Ede
Copyright majorcadailybulletin
On Friday, the president and CEO of the AENA airports authority told a business conference that he was unaware of there having been any “mature proposal” regarding possible participation of regional governments in airport management. Maurici Lucena defended the current model of management and stressed that the rights of shareholders and the shareholding structure as well as the current legal and constitutional framework “must be respected”.
Lucena referred to one of AENA’s shareholders, the British investment fund company, TCI. On Thursday, TCI had written to Lucena warning that its investments would be at risk if pressures from various regional governments, including that of the Balearics, were to be successful in bringing about co-management of airports. The TCI letter stated that such initiatives were “illegal and unconstitutional”.
Forty-nine per cent of AENA’s shares are in private hands, the Spanish Government holds the rest via the ENAIRE holding company. TCI was one of the original shareholders when AENA was partially privatised in 2014, this privatisation having been highlighted as a complicating factor in any proposals for regional government involvement.
The Spanish Government has made this point but is now said to be willing to consider regional participation in the Basque Country and Catalonia. The Balearics want co-management as well, the current government having followed previous governments, both of the right and of the left, in pursuing this ambition. Andalusia and the Canaries have also voiced their interest in some sort of participation agreement.
In the Balearics, so it has been argued, regional management might be a means of effecting tourism containment, although there has never been any explanation as to how decisions would be made if there were to be a change in the management model, let alone how airline schedules might be impacted.
How willing the Spanish Government actually is in considering the Basque and Catalonia arrangements is open to question, albeit it is conscious of a need for nationalist support in both regions. But the shareholding structure is a complication, and all interested parties know that it is.
