Luis Garicano 🇪🇺🇺🇦 Profile picture
May 25, 2021 19 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Llevo meses alertando de las irregularidades en el rescate a Plus Ultra. He presentado una denuncia ante la Comisión Europea y el Gobierno ha tenido que dar explicaciones.

Tras estudiarlas a fondo, me reafirmo: Es una ayuda de Estado ILEGAL. Abro HILO con la investigación🔎 1/19
Contexto: tras mi denuncia ante la Comisión Europea por ayuda de Estado ilegal a Plus Ultra, el Gobierno ha enviado sus explicaciones a la Comisión. Presentamos nuestra respuesta el 20 de mayo y hoy la vamos a compartir con vosotros. 2/19
Hay 4 argumentos clave sobre Plus Ultra que explico en mi escrito:
👉 No es una empresa estratégica
👉 Estaba en crisis antes del Covid
👉 No es viable: no podrá devolver el dinero en 7 años
👉 La ayuda es manifiestamente desproporcionada
3/19
NO ES ESTRATÉGICA
⭕ Tiene 4 aviones y solo vuela a 3 países
⭕ Cuota de mercado del 0.1% del mercado aéreo español (0.2% si solo se consideran empresas 🇪🇸)
⭕ En las conexiones Madrid-Latinoamérica (su mercado geográfico) tiene la cuota de mercado más pequeña: 1.5%
4/19
¿Y, por qué es un problema que no sea estratégica?
👉 Porque va en contra de la Sentencia del Tribunal General de la UE
👉 Porque es arbitraria: si Plus Ultra no es estratégica, pero ha recibido una ayuda millonaria, ¿Por qué no la recibe un bar o un hotel?
5/19
PLUS ULTRA ESTABA EN CRISIS ANTES DE LA PANDEMIA
❌La UE autorizó al Gobierno a dar ayudas estatales siempre y cuando la empresa NO estuviese en crisis
🧑‍⚖️ ¿Cómo se sabe si está en crisis? Si las pérdidas acumuladas han hecho desaparecer más de la mitad del capital suscrito 6/19
⭕ Desde su creación en 2015, Plus Ultra no había tenido beneficios ningún año (en 2019, antes de la pandemia, tuvo 2.7M de pérdidas)
⭕ Acumulaba 13M de pérdidas, es decir más de la mitad de su capital suscrito (19.2M) 7/19
Para cumplir con el requisito y recibir la ayuda, Plus Ultra utilizó un préstamo participativo SIMULADO de €6.3m que le dio la empresa panameña Panacorp. Os explico el truco en el video (aviso: huele fatal) 8/19
UNA AYUDA MANIFIESTAMENTE DESPROPORCIONADA
Según la ley, la ayuda no puede ser mayor a las pérdidas de capital sufridas entre 31/12/2019 y el momento de la solicitud, el 02/09/2020. En el caso de Plus Ultra, consta que, a finales de octubre de 2020, había perdido, 16.3M
9/19
El Gobierno le ha dado una ayuda ¡3 veces mayor que la cantidad legalmente permitida! a una empresa controlada por personas de dudosa reputación 10/19
RIESGO DE QUE EL DINERO NO SE DEVUELVA

Plus Ultra dice que recuperará su nivel de actividad en 2022, pero organismos internacionales de aviación civil estiman que en el mejor de los casos será en 2024
👉 los vuelos internacionales fuera de la UE serán los que más tarden 11/19
Incluso con unas estimaciones tan optimistas, Plus Ultra espera perder 34M entre 2020 y 2022.

¿Cómo va a poder cubrir el agujero de pérdidas acumuladas y devolver €53m en 2026 (como se ha comprometido con la SEPI), sabiendo que jamás ha generado beneficios? 12/19
LA TRAMA VENEZOLANA

Si Plus Ultra no es estratégica para España y no cumplía las condiciones para recibir la ayuda… ¿para quién es estratégica? 13/19
Los accionistas de Plus Ultra están relacionados con investigaciones por corrupción y blanqueo de dinero. 14/19
La ex fiscal general de Venezuela ha acusado al Presidente y accionista de Plus Ultra, Rodolfo Reyes, de operar compañías corruptas en beneficio de Nicolás Maduro 👇15/19
En conclusión, las explicaciones del Gobierno ante Bruselas no solo no eliminan las sospechas, sino que confirman todos los extremos de mi denuncia 👇
16/19
Voy a ser muy claro: El Presidente del Gobierno y los ministros implicados deben dar explicar a todos los españoles y asegurar que la ayuda pagada del bolsillo de los contribuyentes no acaba en una cuenta en Panamá. 17/19
Esta mañana he dado una rueda de prensa donde explico con detalle todo el caso. Podéis verla aquí 👇18/19
Y aquí podéis ver el escrito de alegaciones que he enviado a la Comisión 👇 19/19
luisgaricano.eu/wp-content/upl…

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More from @lugaricano

Nov 13
Europe had an effective tool for climate action: the Emissions Trading System (ETS). Instead of expanding this market-based solution, we've built a byzantine regulatory framework that goes far beyond emissions reduction.
THREAD on my post today on the "Compliance Doom Loop"
1/10 Image
Costs are staggering: Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires 42,000 companies report 1,052 data points (783 mandatory). Cost: €150K-1M per company annually.
CSRD compliance costs of 12.5% of investment of mid sized firms (EIB).

2/ siliconcontinent.com/p/the-complian…Image
Danish firms face 63% more regulations in 2023 vs 2001. Chemical industry SME compliance costs nearly doubled: €332.5K (2014) to €577K (2023). Add GDPR: €500K-10M more.
3/ Image
Read 10 tweets
Nov 6
Wake-up Europe! Enough of the de-growth agenda!
There is no strategic autonomy while we spend our every waking hour erecting barriers to growth!
THREAD on the post today in Silicon Continent by @pietergaricano.
1/8
Today's Trump victory makes Europe's strategic autonomy urgent. But Europe has lived beyond its means through "luxury rules" - virtuous but growth-hurting policies that were only possible due to US protection and innovation.
2/
siliconcontinent.com/p/the-end-of-l…
Luxury rules are laws that make our privileged societies feel good but harm competitiveness. Like Germany closing nuclear plants in 2011, increasing reliance on imported gas, or the EU's GDPR hurting tech innovation.
3/
Read 8 tweets
Oct 30
The EU AI Act seems designed to allow AI only for routine tasks while hindering its use in high-level problem-solving.

This will endanger European AI startups and significantly damage EU productivity.

THREAD on our post today in Silicon Continent.
1/9 Image
An AI bank teller in the EU would need two humans to oversee it. A startup building an AI tutor faces countless hurdles before launching. The is the reality under the EU AI Act—a well-meaning but flawed attempt to regulate AI.
2/
siliconcontinent.com/p/the-strange-…
The Act classifies AI systems by risk: unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal. Unacceptable systems, like social scoring or workplace emotion recognition, are banned.
Fines can reach €15 million or 3% of global revenue.
3/
Read 9 tweets
Oct 16
We keep hearing how solving Europe’s innovation stagnation requires more public spending. But the numbers show otherwise: the EU falls behind in private R&D investment, not public.
A thread based on this week’s blog.
1/10
siliconcontinent.com/p/the-problem-…Image
As a share of GDP, Europe spends 0.74% on public sector R&D, compared to the U.S. 0.69%.

The actual R&D gap is in private sector spending, where Europe spends 1.3% of GDP compared to the United States' 2.4%!
That gap is worth 341 billion in R&D spending in 2021. /2
Take the story of DeepMind. It is a contemporary of EU's AI flagship, the Human Brain Project, launched in 2013 with €600M in public funding, aimed to simulate a human brain in 10 years. It's now widely regarded as a failure, while DeepMind leads in AI. /3
Read 10 tweets
Apr 19
New data shows that the EU Commission has blown the chance the NextGen gave it to get the EU on a growth path. Two key elements.
1. Pensions in Spain.
2. Reforms in italy.

The new data is from the ageing report of the EU Commission on the budgetary impact of the pension "reforms"- more below

( h/t @rdomenechv @fernandosols with official data from the Spanish government.)

Small THREAD (1/7)economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/2…
The EU NextGen plans gave an unprecedented and powerful stick to the EU Commission to demand reforms and investments in exchange of money. Never has the Commission had the chance to get states to get some reforms going.

In Spain, the EU Commission has been complicit (in spite of numerous warnings) in setting Spain on an unsustainable Fiscal path
(2/7)
Under cover (!!!) of the "reforms" required by the European NextGen plan, the Spanish government abrogated the 2012 reforms of pensions (the single reform done by the Rajoy government), based on an automatic adjustment mechanism, without putting anything else meaningful in place.

The cost is 3.3 points of GDP higher than before the reform.

(3)Image
Read 7 tweets
Mar 15
Some reactions to the (wonderful) Levitt interview.
1) On the @uchicago PhD program and the atmosphere in the department in the 90s (toxic?).
2) On Price Theory and its future at @uchicago and beyond.
3) On the "technification" of economics and the blurring of the "theory-empirics" boundaries.
(link to interview: )
(Thread)
1/npodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ste…
1) On the Econ PhD Program. I went in 1992, graduated in 1998. I did not feel the ambiance was toxic. It was tough work, almost brutal, not toxic. I was given a chance I would not have gotten elsewhere. There was nothing personal about the standards. We were getting trained by the best and that was intellectually invaluable -we got the chance of a lifetime. Here are some profs of my first two years (note 5 nobels):
Macro: Sargent, Lucas, Cochrane, Woodford, Stokey, Townsend.
Micro: Becker, Rosen, Murphy, Scheinkman
Metrics: Hansen, Heckman, Zellner.
It was extremely hard, by far the hardest thing I have ever done. But it should be hard. They were trying to put a bunch of kids at the frontier of knowledge.
It was not for everyone, but we knew what we were getting into. My admired supervisor, Sherwin Rosen, then department chair, gave us a "superstar" (he wrote THE paper after all) talk on the first day. He told us half of us would fail in the first year Core (and exit with an MA, is that so bad?), half of the rest would not make the prelims. Of the 50 we were there, maybe 10 would finish the PhD, most of those would never get any citation.
And yet we persisted. We wanted to learn, and were grateful for the hance.
2/n
2) On Price Theory. What is the Chicago Price Theory style? Best thing I can recommend is to experience it yourself by listening to the playlist of Kevin Murphy's classes. . He is an amazing teacher, and makes economics come alive.
Is it true as Levitt says, quoting Mulligan to Friedman, that this style of Micro lost in the market place of ideas?
3/nyoutube.com/@chicagopricet…
Read 10 tweets

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