Lisbon, July 11, 2025 (Lusa) - The government expects to complete the four stages of the TAP reprivatisation process within a year, and the timetable will become final as soon as the regulators approve it.
After the government kicked off the sale of the airline on Thursday with the approval of the decree-law, which still has to be promulgated by the president of Portugal, the goal is to take the specifications to the cabinet within 15 days, explained Infrastructure Minister Miguel Pinto Luz at a meeting with journalists.
Following the promulgation of the decree-law by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, there will be a 60-day pre-qualification phase for interested parties. In October 2023, the president vetoed the document drawn up by António Costa’s government 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, because it “requested further clarification and input to ensure the desired maximum transparency of the process”.
After the proposal exploration phase, potential candidates will have 90 days to submit proposals for consideration. However, the cabinet will review the deadline, so it remains indicative. The same applies to the third stage, which consists of the submission of binding proposals, which should also last 90 days.
Finally, after the selection team selects the most attractive proposals, the negotiation phase will take place, if there is more than one proposal on the table for the purchase of up to 49.9% of the airline’s capital.
The team will carry out the operation through a direct sale model, with up to 5% reserved for employees, as provided for in the privatisation law. The buyer will have a preference for the percentage remaining after employee subscriptions.
“We believe that the operation will be completed within a year,” said Miguel Pinto Luz, warning that this timetable is dependent on the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (DGComp) approving the operation.
The specifications will also ensure that, if for any reason the government is not ‘comfortable’ with the proposals, “it can withdraw from the process without any burden”.
The government prefers, for the time being, to withhold any estimate of the proceeds from the sale of TAP to safeguard the operation.
“We will, of course, keep sensitive information confidential to safeguard the state’s negotiating position. We will wait for the proposals,” said the minister.
Parpública, the State’s shareholding management company, will prepare the report analysing the proposals for consideration by the cabinet. We will also set up a special monitoring committee, chaired by Daniel Traça, former director of the Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE).
This committee will support the government in pursuing the objectives and principles of transparency, rigour and impartiality in the reprivatisation process.
Luís Cabral and Rui Albuquerque will also join this group.
The cabinet's approval of the decree-law 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.
Interruptions due to the fall of the last two PS and PSD governments have paused the reprivatisation of the airline, which has been on the table since 2023.
Originally state-owned, TAP underwent partial privatisation in 2015, but the António Costa government reversed the process in 2016 and took back 50% of the company.
Last year, Luís Montenegro’s government revisited the issue and expressed its intention to proceed with the sale of a minority stake in 2025. Since then, the government has been negotiating with major European groups such as Air France-KLM, Lufthansa and IAG.
SCR/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
