Lisbon, July 10, 2025 (Lusa) - The governing PSD believes that the start of the privatisation process of TAP, announced on Thursday by the prime minister, will allow the Portuguese people to recover the “significant” financial effort they previously made to safeguard the future of the national airline.
The vice-president of the Social Democratic Party, Alexandre Poço, conveyed this position to journalists shortly after the government announced its decision to begin the process of reprivatising TAP, with the sale of 49.9% of the airline’s capital in the first phase.
“We believe that this is an important decision because, first of all, it seeks to recover the significant financial effort that the Portuguese people have made with TAP in recent years,” said Alexandre Poço.
The PSD vice-president also stressed that the government’s decision “safeguards the role of TAP as a strategic company for the national economy”.
“It also safeguards the Lisbon hub and other national and regional airports, while also aiming to safeguard the most strategic routes for the Portuguese,” he added, before referring to the issue of the company’s workers.
“The government’s decision ensures that the role of workers in the company is safe now and in the future, making sure that around 5% of the company will be available to workers in this first phase of privatising TAP,” he said.
Alexandre Poço also left a message from a political point of view, talking about two of the most important things for the national transport and infrastructure sector.
“The two most important issues in the airport sector that we encountered when we came to power concerned the new airport and the resolution of TAP’s share capital. Now, after a year, we have resolved the new airport issue, the future Luís de Camões airport is underway, and this decision by the cabinet now resolves the problem of TAP’s share capital,” he argued.
In this privatisation process, the government intends to sell up to 49.9% of the airline’s capital through a direct sale model, reserving up to 5% for employees, as the privatisation law provides.
This is the first step towards the sale of TAP, which will once again have private shareholders after the government moved to nationalise it in 2020 due to the impact of the pandemic on air transport.
The president of Portugal must also approve the decree-law, and in October 2023 the President had vetoed the document that António Costa’s government drew up to start the privatisation of TAP.
At the time, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa decided to return the bill, approved by the cabinet on 28 September of that year, on the grounds that it “requested further clarification and input to ensure the desired maximum transparency of the process”.
The government has kept the reprivatisation of the airline on the table since 2023, and it paused the process with the fall of the last two PS and PSD governments.
PMF/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
