In a letter sent to António Costa, Luís Montenegro informed the Government on Wednesday that he wants the immediate start of work on the Humberto Delgado Airport, a strategic environmental assessment for Montijo, Alcochete and, in the limit, “any other” place that the Executive socialist will find it necessary to study. If these and other conditions are met, the PSD will approve the process.

The Social Democrats also demand that this evaluation be completed within a maximum period of one year. Montenegro also advocates that this evaluation be carried out by “personal allusions of recognized technical, academic and scientific merit, to be indicated preferably by independent entities linked to the academy (including protocols with foreign universities) and to the areas of economic knowledge and aeronautical and civil engineering”.

In practice, the Social Democrats understand that the National Civil Engineering Laboratory (LNEC) should not be the only ones to comment on the location —as was planned in the controversial order by Pedro Nuno Santos that António Costa ordered to revoke— and they want more entities to join the long-awaited final study on the future airport.

The PSD will not have no intervention in the choice of these entities, nor the criteria that will be used to choose them, referring only as an example to the American university MIT.

More: in this letter sent to António Costa, and distributed in the meantime, Luís Montenegro also defends that the Government will present a “comparative analysis of the costs and execution times of each of the sites under study, including all the related, complementary and necessary infrastructures for the good and comprehensive operation of the new airport”. And it leaves open the possibility of including in this assessment other locations that until now have not been considered by the Executive.

The letter maintains the term indicated by the Government to make a final decision on the airport solution, of one year or more 2023but the selection methodology of such “personalities of recognized technical, academic and scientific merit” who, in turn, should preferably be indicated by independent entities, indicates that this may not be a quick process.

Behind the decision to choose, by international public tender, the entity that would carry out the strategic environmental assessment, there was already a suspicion within the Ministry of Infrastructure about the exemption of LNEC in this process.

The institution had already chosen one of the options under analysis, the Alcochete Shooting Range, in 2008, and the then president of the LNEC, Matías Ramos, was one of the current defenders of this solution. against the Montijo military base.

But when the tender was launched, the award of which did not go ahead because the consortium proposed by the jury included a company linked to the manager of Spanish airports, the Ministry of Infrastructure already expected that the result would only be delivered in 2023. Almost a year has passed and this mission has not yet been awarded to any entity.

New airport solution is only decided in 2023, the year in which Montijo should be ready

While the works are being carried out at the Humberto Delgado airport (PSD requirement if the Government wants the Social Democrats to come on board), the Socialist Executive must guarantee the “use and enhancement of the installed airport capacity” in Porto and the Algarve, but also in Cascaisin the field of commercial and light aviation traffic in the Lisbon region”.

In recent weeks, as both have made public, António Costa and Luís Montenegro have maintained contacts at the highest level to define the methodology that should guide decision-making on the location of the new airport. From now on, after having clarified the “beacons” of the PSD, Montenegro indicates Miguel Pinto Lightvice president of the party, as the party’s main interlocutor.

Montenegro does not forget Pedro Nuno

In a long letter, Montenegro does not allow himself to refer to the episode starring Pedro Nuno Santos, when the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing took for granted that the solution for the airport would go through the construction of the complementary Montijo airport and, in the long term, with the new Alcochete airport replacing Portela, a decision that would be annulled by António Costa and that culminated in a public apology by the minister.

Now, the leader of the PSD does not let this episode go unnoticed, lamenting the “rudeness, incomprehensible and irresponsible”, as Pedro Nuno Santos had published in a decision with the decision “contrary to the commitments assumed and the most elementary rules of institutional coexistence between sovereign bodies”.

Luís Montenegro still points the finger at António Costa. “They had [Governo] at your disposal the opportunity to make possible the increasingly urgent requalification works of the Humberto Delgado airport. This seven-year impasse has led us today into a chaotic situation and without precedents in the Portela airport infrastructure: delays beyond what is reasonable; collapsed logistics and handling situation; Immigration and Border Service unable to operate; worse service provided to users and added difficulties in the privileged position of TAP as operator of a strategic HUB”, denounces the Social Democratic leader.

“The PSD, as a great party of Portuguese democracy, today with the mission assigned to it by the people of being the strongest voice of the opposition and tomorrow the alternative government of the country, does not act due to moods or tantrums whatever its nature,” says Montenegro.