Team size: Eight 

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?  

The past year was very challenging and different. Especially for the operation of Athens International Airport and after the largest crisis, starting from 2020, where we had to deal with unique circumstances, such as the health threat with lockdowns and cross-border travel restrictions, AIA had a great recovery year, with a strong kick-off in terms of traffic growth and healthy profitability.  Along with Istanbul, only Athens International Airport has recovered its pre-pandemic (2019) direct connectivity (+17 percent). 

More specifically, during “Routes Europe 2024” conference, the most important “meeting point” between airports and airlines, the Athens Airport was again voted first for its airline & destination marketing actions and strategy, in the competitive category of airports over 20 million passengers.  

Furthermore, business had to focus on the risk assessment and planning, crisis communication, business continuity, and crisis recovery. And it did it successfully by taking all measures required to confront the abrupt recovery and handling the millions of passengers, who at the end of 2024 are estimated to reach 31 mio pax, when the annual capacity right now is at 26 mio pax. 

The above was more critical since as of 7/2/2024, the company has been listed before the ATHEX and had to comply with all the regulatory requirements imposed by law and the decisions of the HCMC. The legal affairs department has been transformed to a legal affairs and corporate governance department. 

In this direction, the cooperation of the legal team with all the competent departments of the company, especially with internal audit, risk, compliance and investor relations departments in alignment with the top management has been more critical and highly demanding than ever. 

Another challenge is the ESG part and the reporting of the company as per the new CSRD requirements, so not only financing reporting is necessary, but governance reporting as well is a significant obligation.  Furthermore, climate change is one crucial factor fundamentally reshaping the role of legal departments as well. So, it is entirely important to the strategic success of our company and is top priority on the agenda of corporate conversation.  

What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?

The company aims to reach Net Zero for its CO2 emissions by 2025, prior to the target of 2050 set by Europe’s airports, and the legal team is also involved on this project. Legal affairs and corporate governance department assists management to get all the required approvals as from the Hellenic Forestry Society, the Energy Regulator and the competent Ministry as well as the HCAA.  

Over the last years, climate change has already become a key issue in the context of airport development projects and related litigation (cf. Heathrow, Vienna). 

Reporting ESG is one of the main obligations of the company. A special department has been created, the Sustainability Strategic Planning and Reporting (SPR), which through a balanced, multi-faceted approach with a long-term perspective, that takes account of the social, environmental, and economic aspects of the business, SPR verifies that sustainability spans across all key aspects of AIA’s operation. 

LGL in cooperation with the PRC dept, has developed ESG criteria, which have been included in the evaluation of the bidders to all our tenders. 

During the previous years, the company has launched initiatives to revamp its high-performance culture. In this evolution of culture, it is critical to focus on increasing accountability and impact of each team of the company, enabling and inspiring people to perform at their best. 

Finally, the company’s main 2024 business priorities are related to operational excellence by successfully implementing improvement initiatives on performance, infrastructure expansion with regard to capacity expansion to 33 mio annual pax, new governance and financial performance monitoring aiming to comply with relevant legal and regulatory framework, sustainability strategy and action in relation to ESG KPIs and digital transformation in terms of cybersecurity and leveraging AI.