Portuguese State is “in hands of ANA” (airports authority)
The coordinator of the Independent Technical Commission that has just reported on what it believes is the best site for the new Lisbon airport has admitted the last year has been fraught with outside pressures.
In interview with Observador online, Maria do Rosário Partidário explained that the Portuguese State is in the hands of ANA (airports authority), an adjunct of the French Vinci group, when it comes to the construction of the new airport, because the concession contract leaves little room for negotiation.
ANA has made no bones of the fact that it wants Montijo as the site for the new airport, thus the independent technical commission’s brief was not an easy one (particularly as it has come to the conclusion that Montijo is simply not viable long-term, irrespective of all the environmental disadvantages).
According to Maria do Rosário, she came under “a lot of pressure” during the year she has been at the head of the technical commission – most recently over the moment for releasing the report presented last Tuesday.
She explains she was “pressurised into postponing the report until the next government took office”, writes SIC Notícias.
ANA has since wasted no time in criticising the report. And this is ‘the rub’, explains Maria do Rosário. The main obstacles to building this new airport are not political, nor are they environmental, she told Observador. They are legal, precisely because of the contract with ANA.
This viewpoint explains all the shilly-shallying that has been going on in recent years; the false start, and the acrimony.
With so much time, expertise and money already put into reaching the decision favouring the ‘Campo do Tiro de Alcochete’, Maria do Rosário Partidário believes it would be a “very great waste of public money” if her commission’s report was simply put into a drawer somewhere (to be conveniently forgotten) “but in this country, everything is possible”.
Her hope appears to be that the government (the next government) renegotiates its concession agreement with ANA – a process that will only serve to extend the time that it has taken to make a decision that politicians have already said is ‘50 years late’...
Source material: Observador/ SIC Notícias
