Athens airport concession contract extension approved by Parliament

A wide majority of Parliament MPs on Thursday approved of a finance ministry draft bill extending the concession for the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport of Athens.

Deputies from ruling SYRIZA and main opposition New Democracy (ND) party approved the bill, while the lesser opposition parties voted against or “present”.

The concession extension reached 1.1 billion euros, after an earlier offer by the concessionaire, at 680 million euros, was nixed by the European Commission’s directorate-general for Competition (DG COMP) as unsatisfactory.

The government and independent auditors that had accepted the first offer claimed that the wrong data was used to assess the airport concession’s market value.