In a statement, Zero - Associação Sistema Terrestre Sustentável “enthusiastically welcomes the understanding and decision of the APA, because, as it has repeatedly said, it shares this understanding, and had already warned of the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment for any works at the Airport Humberto Delgado”.

“It is also to be congratulated that the environmental impact study (EIA) to be developed considers the future evolution of flights until reaching the maximum capacity of 45 movements per hour foreseen in the Council of Ministers resolution” of May 27th, adds non-governmental organization (NGO).

The APA, the association highlights, spoke out for the need for rapid runway entry and exit works “to be subject to Environmental Impact Assessment (AIA)”, understanding that, by reducing the “runway lane occupation time for each aircraft , allow, alongside other interventions already carried out at the airport, an increase in its capacity in terms of number of flights”.

“Which is likely to cause significant negative impacts in terms of noise, socio-economics and territorial planning, taking into account the area where the airport is located and the characteristics of airport activity, a reason that justifies the decision”, warns Zero.

The association chaired by Francisco Ferreira hopes that the APA's decision “will put an end to the fragmentation of interventions to surreptitiously expand the airport's capacity”.

In this sense, Zero praises “APA's unprecedented decision”, but considers that “it suffers from inconsistency, as there have been other interventions at the airport since 2015, and more are planned, which would also justify triggering this need”.

“These interventions consist of the construction of two other fast exits in 2020, the reorganization of the airspace in the Lisbon region, the closure of cross runway 17/35, the update of the air traffic control system, the closure of the Figo Maduro aerodrome [...], in updating the air traffic control system, and in extending the terminal”, a recently tendered project.

For the NGO, these interventions, “alone or together, allow an increase in flights at the airport, and therefore, even the non-physical ones, should be subject to EIA, but they were not”.

“This situation prefigures the successful use by the concessionaire of the fractionation technique (‘salami slice’) to expand the airport’s capacity, which consists of small changes that are less likely to generate objections or trigger the application of the legal regime of AIA”, he points out, hoping that the APA “will now put an end to the success of this strategy”.

Zero also warns that the airport “is currently operating well beyond the limits for which its Environmental Impact Statement (EIA) is valid”, issued in 2006 when the aeronautical infrastructure handled around 12 million passengers per year.