Lisbon, Aug. 14, 2025 (Lusa) - Livre, PCP and BE requested parliamentary scrutiny on Thursday of the government's decree-law privatising TAP, considering that the process is "intrinsically disastrous" and should be "clearly rejected".
This request for parliamentary scrutiny was submitted to parliament today, precisely on the day that the government's decree-law on the first phase of TAP's privatisation was published in the Diário da República, and is signed by all the Livre, PCP and BE MPs.
In the document, the three parties stress that the privatisation of TAP comes at a time when the airline "is stabilised, capitalised, financially sound and in a position to face the demands of the future".
"By talking about the “first phase” of the TAP privatisation process, the government is also demonstrating that it still intends to privatise the entire company. This is not a partial privatisation: it is a total privatisation carried out in stages," the document reads.
Livre, PCP and BE emphasise that "the major airlines are showing their interest in acquiring TAP not because it is a company worth little, but because it is worth a lot", and "even more so as a strategic asset for the national economy, for the country's sovereignty and development".
"TAP is of fundamental importance to territorial cohesion, connecting the mainland, the Autonomous Region of the Azores and the Autonomous Region of Madeira; as well as connecting Portuguese communities in the diaspora, and the relationship between Portugal and multiple countries, especially Portuguese-speaking countries," they emphasise.
The three parties reject the idea that TAP needs to be sold "to “recover the money put into it by the state”", arguing that, on the contrary, "it is the public TAP that recovers and remunerates this investment".
'The €3.2 billion that the state has put into TAP (to cover the losses caused by the pandemic, to make good the damage caused by the Manutenção Brasil adventure, and to capitalise the company) is paid back through the profits that TAP generates,' they said.
Livre, PCP and BE emphasise that TAP is the “largest exporter of services in the country”, makes an “annual contribution of €150 million” to Social Security, plus the income tax on the salaries the company pays, so, they stress, “it is the public TAP that remunerates the State for the money invested in it”.
"Faced with this reality, we must defend the public interest and the national interest, not through supposed “improvements” to a process that is intrinsically disastrous, but by clearly rejecting this privatisation process," they argue.
The appraisal of decree-laws is an instrument of legislative oversight that allows parliament to appraise and amend or terminate the validity of the law under appraisal and must be signed by at least ten deputies and delivered to the Bureau of parliament within 30 days of the publication of the decree-law in the Diário da República.
Livre currently has a parliamentary group of six MPs, the PCP has three, and the BE has a single MP, Mariana Mortágua, so the signatures of the three parties will make up the ten signatures needed to request parliamentary scrutiny of the decree-law.
The decree-law initiating the privatisation of 49.9% of TAP was published today in the Diário da República (Official Gazette) and provides for the private investor to be able to take more than 44.9% of the company, acquiring whatever the workers don't buy of the 5% they have reserved.
As the government had already announced, this reprivatisation could amount to 49.9% of TAP's share capital, through a direct reference sale of up to 44.9% of TAP's share capital to the reference investor and a sale of up to 5% of the capital to the group's employees.
TA/ADB // ADB.
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