Fate of Corfu Airport Puts Greek Bailout Deal to the Test
By JACK EWING

CORFU, Greece — In the running debate over how to revive the Greek economy, there is one thing that locals and foreigners can agree on: The airport on this resort island, like many others in tourist-dependent Greece, does not befit a eurozone country.

The big, divisive question is whether the Greek government will be willing and able to hand over management of Corfu and many of the country’s other busiest airports to outside professional management, as part of Greece’s economic makeover.

The dispute is shaping up as an early test of the viability of Greece’s new $97 billion bailout program, which demands the privatization of many state-run assets — including management of the airports. Whatever the outcome of the Greek national election next Sunday, challenges like Corfu will await the new government.

The airports could also become a barometer of whether the new Greek government will be capable of fulfilling any of the program’s tough conditions, which include either selling or transferring management of state assets like railroads and seaports. The bailout program requires these conditions as a way to repair Greek government finances and spur economic growth.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras agreed to the bailout conditions before he called for the coming election, which he hopes will consolidate his authority and marginalize the most left-wing dissidents in his Syriza party.

At Corfu, the airport’s shortcomings include a runway that ends so close to a public highway that the air traffic controller must switch on a stoplight during takeoffs to halt traffic. Otherwise, the cars can be buffeted by turbulence, or startled drivers might veer off the road.

Inside the terminal, the luggage conveyors frequently break down. The rusting restroom fixtures rarely work, and some toilets lack seats. On summer weekends, when charter flights carry thousands of vacationers to and from cities like Birmingham, England, or Brussels, the overflow can force passengers to wait outside under the broiling Mediterranean sun.

“The first and last picture of any island is the airport,” said Dimitris Diavatis, who owns two hotels on Corfu. “If people are waiting in the sun, that is going to destroy the good picture from their one or two weeks here.”

Air traffic controllers, meanwhile, see a variety of safety concerns, as the government’s debt problems have for years deprived many Greek airports of sufficient money for maintenance and modernization. One exception is the Athens airport, which has already been partly privatized and generally lives up to its role as a modern international hub.

But there is little agreement on how best to bring Corfu up to modern standards, along with more than a dozen other airports now owned and managed by the government.

The other eurozone countries are demanding that the government turn over airport management to Fraport, the company that runs the Frankfurt Airport and airports in eight other countries, including those in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Lima, Peru. But many Greeks, including the local government on Corfu, see that as an imperialistic incursion and are vowing to resist with all means necessary, including lawsuits and strikes.

That the airport contractor in question comes from Germany, which many Greeks consider their chief antagonist among eurozone creditors, only adds to the tensions. For many Greeks, the airports deal is symbolic of their broader concerns about the bailout: They fear that the government is surrendering vital national assets at an extreme discount to Germans intent on forcing the country into economic subjugation.

“What they didn’t manage in World War II they are managing now,” Kostas Nikolouzos, the left-wing mayor of Corfu, said of Germany, voicing a common sentiment. “It may sound extreme, but it’s true.”

Fraport and a Greek partner, the Copelouzos Group, won a bid last year to take over management of 14 Greek airports, including those in Corfu and popular tourist destinations like Mykonos, Santorini, Rhodes and Kos. Most of the airports are on islands, but the deal also includes the airport at Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city.

Fraport and Copelouzos agreed to pay 1.2 billion euros, about $1.4 billion, as well as a share of future profits, for a 40-year lease.

But the agreement has yet to go into force — initially because the Tsipras government demanded new conditions after it came to power in January. More recently, though, since Greece and its eurozone creditors agreed in July to the country’s third bailout since 2010, Fraport has sought to reopen discussion about the terms.

Some Greeks consider Fraport’s partnership with Copelouzos Group a perpetuation of the dominance of Greek oligarchs over the country’s economy. The company’s founder, Dimitrios Copelouzos, is one of the country’s wealthiest people and the main supplier of Russian natural gas to Greece.

Mr. Nikolouzos, the Corfu mayor and a member of Syriza, said the deal would give Fraport a stranglehold over Corfu’s economic lifeline.

“We are a place totally dependent on tourism,” Mr. Nikolouzos said in his office in a villa that serves as city hall. “Airports belong to the strategic infrastructure of the country.”

Few would dispute that. But part of the rationale of the privatization program is to transfer management of crucial assets to private companies with more international experience and more money to spend on improvements.

The public officials now in charge of many of the airports often show little entrepreneurial drive, critics say. While most modern airports have become de facto shopping malls, the Corfu airport has only a small duty-free outlet and two souvenir shops selling stuffed animals and “I Love Corfu” refrigerator magnets.

More profit-oriented management, critics say, would create jobs on Corfu and other islands, helping to address Greece’s staggering unemployment rate — 25.2 percent, by far the highest jobless figure in the eurozone.

“The basis of the Greek economy is tourism,” said Stergios Pitsiorlas, chairman of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, the Greek privatization agency. “We need a dramatic improvement of all the infrastructure.”

Mr. Pitsiorlas, who was appointed privatization chief in March, said that despite some last-minute wrangling over terms, the agreement with Fraport was still valid and that he expected it to take effect by the end of the year.

The Air Traffic Controllers Association of Greece, a labor union, is officially neutral on the privatization issue. But it would clearly welcome more professional airport management.

“What we want is for the airports to be functioning efficiently,” said Spiros Rolakis, the union president. “If the state can provide that — which they can’t — or a private operator, the result is what matters.”

Recently Serafim Petrou, the union’s secretary, took visitors on a tour of the control center for all of Greek airspace, a region reaching east to Cyprus and south to North Africa.

The large control room, in an otherwise abandoned airport on the outskirts of Athens, looked clean and modern. The controllers, mostly young women wearing headsets, stared at large screens, speaking in clipped tones to pilots.

But Mr. Petrou said the computer technology dated from the 1990s, and had been under extra strain recently because the conflict in Ukraine had forced many flights to take routes further south, over Greece. “This is an exhausted system,” Mr. Petrou said.

One problem, Mr. Petrou and others said, is that landing fees paid by airlines have not been reinvested in the airports. In 2001, the Greek government pledged receipts for landing fees to investors in return for cash upfront. The deal was one of several that helped Greece hide the true size of its debt burden, but later pushed the government close to bankruptcy.

Opponents of the Fraport takeover say that landing fees, about €25 million a year in Corfu, would be plenty to make needed improvements, if only airports had access to the money.

Fraport’s experience in neighboring Bulgaria might offer clues to how the company might operate in Greece. After taking over two Bulgarian airports at the end of 2006, Fraport made substantial improvements to facilities in the Black Sea resorts of Varna and Burgas.

New terminals opened in 2013, with much faster baggage handling, modern restaurants and shops, and roomier arrival and departure areas. Passenger traffic to Varna and Burgas has risen by a total of 500,000 passengers since 2007, to 3.9 million last year.

“The management of the two airports is much better, which has helped bring more passengers,” said Blagoi Ragin, chairman of the Bulgarian Hotel and Restaurant Association.

Still, Fraport faced criticism in Bulgaria for running the airports in a joint venture with TIM, a powerful Bulgarian conglomerate whose activities include transportation, banking and insurance. In a 2005 cable by the United States Embassy in Sofia, published by WikiLeaks, diplomats wrote that they believed TIM was involved with organized crime.

TIM, which has never been found guilty of any wrongdoing, declined to comment.

In Germany, Greeks’ resistance to the takeover of the airports by Fraport is seen as an example of Greek pride taking precedence over economic logic.

“It’s a win-win situation,” said Frank Kaufmann, a member of the State Parliament in Hesse, which owns a 31 percent stake in Fraport. The deal “is more help than exploitation, from our point of view.”

But Giorgos Mavronas, head of the union that represents Corfu airport workers, said he worried that Fraport would have too much market power and could use it to play islands off one another to get what it wants.

“If this goes forward it will be an unprecedented monopoly,” he said recently, sipping a soft drink at a cafe at the edge of Corfu’s old town, which was packed with tourists as dusk fell. “There is no other case in the world where the 14 most important airports are controlled by one company.”

“We intend to organize strikes,” Mr. Mavronas said.

爛機場民營化 新政府挑戰

紐約時報報導，不論這次希臘大選由哪一黨獲勝，新政府都須面對一個挑戰：如何落實紓困協議，將國有資產民營化，以取得九百七十億美元金援。紐時以希臘十四座機場的經營權移交給一家德國公司為例，移交能使機場設備獲得改善，政府財政收入增加，並創造工作機會，但希臘人擔心經濟命脈被德國掌控，以致移交協議尚未生效。

希臘西部觀光勝地科孚島的機場是預定移交經營權的機場之一，行李箱輸送帶經常故障，廁所設備鐵鏽斑斑，幾乎不能用，有些馬桶沒有馬桶座。有一條跑道尾端太過接近公路，航管員得在飛機起飛時，讓公路上的紅燈亮起，免得汽車駕駛人被太靠近的飛機機腹嚇到出車禍。夏天旅遊旺季時，機場不堪負荷，旅客被迫在戶外烈陽下等待入出境。

去年，德國「法蘭克福機場公司」與希臘Copelouzos能源公司合作，標到希臘十四座機場經營權，包括科孚島機場。不過協議未生效，因為齊普拉斯一月上台後，要求重談條件，後因希臘七月同意紓困，法蘭克福公司提議再重談。

許多希臘人把移交解讀成德國帝國主義進犯，而德國又是歐元區債權人之中的主導者，更激起反感，他們怕中央政府把國有資產賤賣給德國，他們揚言要用提告、罷工等方式力阻止。

科孚島市長尼可羅澤斯說：「德國在二戰做不到的，現在竟然做到了，這種觀點聽起來很極端，但千真萬確。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/business/international/fate-of-corfu-airport-puts-greek-bailout-deal-to-the-test.html

2015-09-21．聯合報．A2．焦點．編譯李京倫