Puente accuses Ryanair of practicing "blackmail" and "extortion"
The minister said of the airline: "They want us to facilitate profitability by dispensing with our regulatory framework, which is very good and very reasonable."
BarcelonaRyanair's announcement that it is cutting service and activity in protest against Aena's airport charges provoked numerous reactions this Thursday. The most notable was that of the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, who, during an appearance in Congress, accused the low-cost airline of engaging in "blackmail" and "extortion" and using "fallacies" to justify itself. According to Puente, the company will instead relocate to other, more profitable airports, but without leaving the country. In fact, the Minister of Transport asserted that Ryanair is doing very well for Spain, so much so, he added, that its CEO will receive a €100 million bonus.
During his turn to respond in Congress, Puente recalled that it was Mariano Rajoy's government that regulated airport charges in 2014. In any case, he defended them as a guarantee of user safety. And he has asserted that the problem for Ryanair is not the fees, but profitability, which is why it moves to airports that are better for it. "What happens is that it wants us to facilitate profitability by dispensing with our regulatory framework, which is very good and very reasonable," he added.
The Minister of Social Rights, Consumption and the 2030 Agenda, Pablo Bustinduy, who has been a direct target of the airline's criticism, has criticized the modus operandi Ryanair and has denounced that it is based on "threats," "blackmail," and "extortion." He stated this during an interview on the program The coffee maker of Radiocable, in which he also attacked the low cost Podemos, for its part, has announced that it will file a formal complaint this week with the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) against Ryanair for using the withdrawal of routes, especially those to the Canary Islands, as an "institutional pressure mechanism." The party is requesting the opening of disciplinary proceedings and considers this a possible practice of "covert economic blackmail," following the airline's announcement that it will cut 10% of its operating capacity on routes within Spain, especially on connections to the Peninsula.
