Abertis has assumed a position which cannot be shared in relation to the Autostrade affair. Today’s Corriere della Sera carries an interview I’ve given about this matter.

CdS: Ministro Di Pietro, what is your response to Alemany Mas?
ADP: Instead of getting angry with the Italian government, he should reflect on his own errors and on those of Autostrade.

CdS: Which are?
ADP: Tell me why this gentleman is knocking on all the doors in Rome and in Brussels instead of presenting his merger plan to the only institution that can give or deny authorization and that is the Ministry of Infrastructure?
And then so as not to have to go so low as to ask for what he should ask for according to the law, he takes the issue to the TAR. He doesn’t win any of the 4 cases, and then he complains that we are making him waste time? In what world is he living?

CdS: It has been said that Italy will lose a foreign investor.
ADP: Those are the usual lies. Italy will not lose a Euro in investment. Autostrade is committed to make 11,000,000,000 in investments according to the agreement. And this it will do, since it has an abundance of resources, if, well before completing its commitments, it can distribute an extraordinary dividend of 2,000,000,000. In the merger plans there was not even an extra metre of motorway. Perhaps they didn’t knock on the right door because they didn’t want to be asked for this extra metre.
They were thinking of their own interests and certainly not of the interests of the country.

CdS: But in a market economy they are legitimate interests.
ADP: Certainly, in the right context that’s true. If there is competition, and safeguarding of consumers.
In a public service managed as a concession, making use of the public patrimony, there are other rules. It is the one allocating the concession that must defend the collective interest.
Of course, it seems to me that the Spanish government is keen to promote the interests of the public by dictating the conditions by which E.On can make its offer for Endesa.