AENA RESILIENCE AND SECURITY

The project will finance AENA's capex plan under the DORA II airport regulatory document in the 2022-2026 period. Related works concern AENA's headquarters in Madrid as well as the whole airport network across Spain.

The investments concern safety & security (including compliance with the latest regulatory updates by the European Aviation Safety Agency in terms of airfield layout), operational resilience (including rehabilitation of airside pavements, rehabilitation of existing buildings, upgrade of airfield ground lighting, renovation of utilities networks), IT and innovation.

The project aims at ensuring the operational resilience and maintaining the highest safety and security levels at AENA's network of airports in Spain, which includes all of the most important airports in the country providing a comprehensive geographical coverage of the country. Of a total of 46 airports, 10 of them belong to core TEN-T network and a further 29 to the comprehensive network. A number of core and comprehensive airports are also part of the Atlantic and Mediterranean TEN-T corridors. Since AENA's airport network is the only one serving Spain and alternative airports are either small or are many hours away (either by road and/ or rail), allowing the airports to degrade would imply growing congestion, service disruption and forced diversion to alternative travel means, which a competitive market would not address, constituting a market failure. Alternative means of transport involve a substantial penalty to travellers in terms of both travel time and operating costs, implying that the socio-economic cost associated to the market failure addressed by the project would be very high.

EIB's financing provides the client competitive pricing, longer tenor than commercial lenders and flexible loan conditions, such as long grace and disbursement periods, which are therefore better adapted to the implementation of the Project. EIB's financing also supports AENA to achieve diversification of funding sources and contributes to the stability of their financing needs. The operation will also send a positive signal to the market regarding EIB's strong willingness to support AENA to fully recover from the Covid pandemic.

A number of components included in this project would normally be classified under Annex II of the Directive 2011/92/EU amended by the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive 2014/52/EU, meaning that the Competent Authority makes the decision as to whether a formal EIA is required or not. Alignment to this and to other national and EU environmental legislation, including EU Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings, and the status of any pre-existing development consents will be reviewed and assessed during appraisal.

The Bank will require the promoter to ensure that contracts for implementation of the project have been tendered in accordance with the applicable EU procurement legislation: 2014/25/EU as well as Directive 92/13/EEC as interpreted by the Court of Justice of the EU, with publication of tender notices in the EU Official Journal, as and where required.