BarcelonaTret to start the technical commission between the Spanish and Catalan governments to decide what should finally happen with the future of El Prat airport. Both administrations met this Thursday for the first time to address this debate, after the expansion project promoted by Aena was frozen two and a half years ago.
Sign up for the newsletter Economy Information that affects your pocket
Sign up for it
We only have the Generalitat’s version of what was discussed during the meeting: the Secretary of Mobility, Marc Sanglas, has explained that the work of this body will last until the end of the year. During his attention to the media after the meeting, he did not mention the word “expansion”, but “improvement”, and he remarked that the infrastructure will have to respect the natural environment and the “acoustic rights” of the neighbors.
At the moment what they have agreed with the Ministry of Transport is to establish different working groups around the improvement of El Prat airport. Sanglas has not specified how many there will be, but three of the central topics will be discussed: the governance model, infrastructure and rail connections.
The first point is important because it was one of the Government’s conditions for re-opening this melon, as it demands more presence in decision-making about El Prat. “We have insisted a lot on the need to talk about a Catalan airport system,” remarked Sanglas. The high official of the Generalitat has also referred to the secondary airports of Girona and Reus as a relevant element of discussion and has remarked that in other countries there is a “multi-runway vision” that does not yet exist in Catalonia.
It has not yet been defined who will be part of these working groups, beyond the representatives of the ministry and the Department of Territory, and Sanglas has not ruled out the inclusion of other personalities who are experts in the different areas that the commission will study. The Secretary of Mobility has insisted a lot on the fact that these bodies will be equal and some of the proposals that have already been put on the table so far regarding the future of El Prat will be addressed.
The Generalitat does not rule out incorporating independent experts into the working groups
This first meeting is part of a commitment that had stretched over time. February of last year was one of the key points in the pact between the PSC and ERC to approve the Catalan budgets, when both parties agreed to create a commission to study how to “gain capacity” in the infrastructure. Since then, and with general and municipal elections in between, both Aena and the Generalitat have continued to mention this meeting, which finally did not take place until January 2024.
50 million passengers annually
Precisely, this week the traffic data of El Prat airport during the last year were known: the infrastructure registered almost 50 million passengers, five million short of its theoretical capacity of 55 million, a figure that often has served as an argument in favor of enlargement by its advocates.
2024-01-18 13:43:17
#GeneralitatState #commission #future #Prat #year
