The Government intends to relaunch the privatisation of TAP this year, but the model for selling the State's stake in the airline has not yet been defined, Jornal Económico revealed.

The sale of the company led by Luís Rodrigues is one of the promises included in the Government's programme, together with the start of the new airport project.

The difficulty in defining the privatisation model is not unrelated to the reasons invoked by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in the veto that the President placed on the operation, which was suspended after the dismissal of the previous prime minister, António Costa, and the call for early elections for 10 March, which gave victory to the Democratic Alliance.

It now remains to be seen which privatisation model the Executive will choose and the position that the State shareholder intends to maintain in the airline, after, at the end of October last year, Marcelo returned the TAP privatisation diploma to the previous Government.

When asked about the relaunch of privatisation, an official source from the Ministry of Infrastructure did not comment.

It is recalled that the Head of State requested clarification of three aspects that he considered essential: the State's capacity to monitor and intervene in a strategic company such as TAP; the issue of the sale or acquisition of assets even before privatisation and the transparency of the entire operation, including at a stage prior to the preparation of the specifications to ensure that contacts with potential buyers will be recorded and that this selection process are not negotiation binding.

The previous reprivatisation process began last September when the Socialist Government approved the terms of the sale. The decree-law, vetoed by the President, provided for the sale of at least 51% of TAP's capital, through a competitive direct sale process.

The airline awaits new private owners after 2020 the Government moved towards the nationalisation of TAP, which put its own at risk due to the impact of the pandemic on air transport.

The State's entry dictated the departure of Atlantic Gateway, owned by David Neeleman and Humberto Pedrosa, who had won the 2015 reprivatisation, carried out by the PSD/CDS Government.

TAP announced at the end of March that it had made a record profit of 177.3 million euros in 2023, a year in which it also achieved unprecedented revenues in the company's history, exceeding 4.2 billion euros.