TAP, Portugal’s main airline, is the most toxic asset in Portuguese politics. With the pandemic, the State was forced to inject 3,200 million euros to sustain the existence of the airline, in a very unpopular operation among the population. Now, a few months after the privatization, the deputies are examining the company in a parliamentary commission of inquiry. Since the beginning of the first hearings, the complaints of political interference in the company have put the Government in a compromise.
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Last Tuesday, for almost seven hours, the CEO of the airline, Christine Ourmières-Widener, appeared before the deputies. She complained that the political and media pressure on the company did not allow her to concentrate on business management. As an example of this, the Liberal Initiative deputy, Bernardo Blanco, denounced an email exchange between the CEO of the company and the then Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Hugo Mendes, in February 2022. The messages showed the government’s efforts to alter a regular TAP flight between Maputo and Lisbon to allow the President of the Republic to travel, to the detriment of the other passengers on the flight. The justification: “Marcelo [Rebelo de Sousa] he is our greatest political ally, but if his mood changes, all is lost. One sentence from you against TAP or the Government and pushes the rest of the country against us. He is our main political ally, but he can become our worst nightmare, ”he wrote.
The President of the Republic enjoys great popularity among the Portuguese, being popularly known as the “President of Affections”. Even so, Ourmières-Widener did not change the flight and, with the case made public, the Presidency of the Republic rushed to publicly clarify that the change request did not come from his office.
A meeting between the parliamentary group of the Socialist Party, government advisers and the CEO of TAP was also made public the day before his public appearance in Parliament, last January. The case caused discomfort among the parliamentarians because one of the deputies present in the investigation commission – Carlos Pereira, from the Socialist Party – was also present at that preparatory meeting, which could confirm a conflict of interest.
Ourmières-Widener was fired without notice by Finance Minister Fernando Medina and Infrastructure Minister João Galamba in early March, after Medina tried to get her to resign early. The Government alleges that it is a fair dismissal given the alleged irregularities in the amount paid to Alexandra Reis, a former manager who left the company in February 2022 due to incompatibilities with the CEO, receiving compensation of 500,000 euros.
Some five months after leaving TAP, Alexandra Reis was appointed by the Government as president of the air navigation company NAV. She was there for a short time because in November she was appointed Secretary of State for the Treasury, which depends on the Ministry of Finance.
The value of the compensation, which was kept secret for months, became a national controversy when, on Christmas Eve 2022, the newspaper Morning mail revealed it. Alexandra Reis ended up resigning from the Government, as did the then Infrastructure Minister, Pedro Nuno Santos – who had political control of TAP shared with the Ministry of Finance. Later it was learned that the Minister of Infrastructure himself had approved the compensation of 500,000 euros to Alexandra Reis.
TAP’s course ended up involving the two best-placed candidates to succeed António Costa in controversy: the current Minister of Finance, Fernando Medina, and the former Minister of Infrastructure, Pedro Nuno Santos. Fernando Medina is closer to the line followed by the Prime Minister, António Costa, while Pedro Nuno Santos presents himself as the representative of the most left wing of the PS, viewed favorably by the parties located to his left, such as the Communist Party or the Left Bloc.
Despite the instability caused by political management, on the business side the company registered profits of 65.6 million euros in 2022 and is complying with the restructuring plan presented by the Portuguese Government in Brussels. Even so, and although the intention to dismiss Ourmières-Widener has been known for more than a month, it is still not known when it will become effective and he will leave the company. His successor has already been chosen: Luís Rodrigues, former director of the Azorean airline SATA.
The airline is expected to be privatized in the coming months in a manner yet to be defined. For now, the interest of the IAG group –of which Iberia is a part–, of the Air France-KLM group and of the German Lufthansa is known. Regarding Iberia’s interest in TAP, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, said at the Spanish-Portuguese summit in Lanzarote that, although “it is not up to the Spanish Government to take a position” on an issue that affects a private company, “everything that it serves to strengthen ties with our Portuguese friends is welcome”.
Before the crisis caused by the pandemic, the Portuguese government already owned half of the airline, with totally private management. The company had been privatized by the previous center-right government headed by Pedro Passos Coelho – in a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and the CDS – when the government was already in office. The repurchase of half of the company in February 2016 became one of the first acts of the first government of the socialist António Costa, seen as a rapprochement with the left-wing partners that made it possible to give the necessary parliamentary majority so that the Socialist Party could form government.