“With a left majority, the demands must be much more demanding”: Rui Tavares on the management of the TAP dossier

This Friday, the representative of Livre expressed the opinion that the management of the TAP file “should be much more demanding” with a possible left-wing majority after the legislative elections, saying that public control of the company will be on the negotiating table.

“The management of the TAP file with a left-wing majority is a management that must be much more demanding,” said Rui Tavares in a conversation with the Lusa agency during a visit to the association APOIAR – Association for the Support of Ex-Combatants, Victims of War Stress, in Lisbon.

The newspaper de Negócios reported on Thursday that the contract of former TAP executive president Cristina Ourmier-Widener included the accumulation of management positions in the two companies, and the newspaper SOL writes this Friday that Pedro Nuno Santos, currently Minister of Infrastructure, accepted these conditions.

When asked about the topic, Rui Tavares noted that discussing the “case of the day” loses focus on the “central issue of TAP”, namely the debate about privatization or public control of the airline.

According to Livre, the state should control a large part of TAP, allowing it to become “the company of the future”, highlighting its role in connecting the country to the world and the possibility of it becoming “the spearhead of Portugal’s technological change, thanks to what the aviation sector is experiencing.”

“We think that TAP can give more to Portugal, directly or indirectly, through the services it provides, through the profits it can generate and which can go into the state budget,” he said.

This topic, he added, will be brought up for discussion by Livret during negotiations for a possible left-wing parliamentary majority after the early legislative elections on March 10.

“If we have a discussion about TAP that will focus on the future and what Portugal can get from TAP, that will be largely public, as Livre wants and as it will certainly be at the negotiating table to create this leftist majority . “I think we just have to win in terms of what we can offer people and what can mobilize people in this election,” he said.

Asked whether the TAP issue could affect a possible left-wing majority within the Socialist Party, Tavares replied that the “dossier” “affects the credibility of the socialist absolute majority.”

The Secretary General of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos, took full political responsibility this Friday in Porto for what happened in TAP, the file he managed as Minister of Infrastructure, and emphasized that the contract was concluded with the legal teams of both previous CRAN Directors General .

“The contract was written by legal teams, which means that different legal teams also have different interpretations of what was done there, and therefore they are all based on the assumption that the accumulation of these positions is illegal, I do not have that. certainty,” he stressed.

TAP’s former executive president was sacked for cause in April 2023 following a controversial half-million-euro compensation to former administrator Alexandra Reis, which led to the dismissal of then infrastructure minister Pedro Nuno Santos and his secretary of state Hugo Mendes and the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the airline’s management.