Airport location debate returns to previously rejected locations

  • Lusa
  • 6 July 2022

The president of the Business Association of Leiria Region (Nerlei) said the "obvious location" for the country's new airport infrastructure is north of the River Tagus.

The president of the Business Association of Leiria Region (Nerlei), António Poças, said on Wednesday that the “obvious location” for the country’s new airport infrastructure is north of the River Tagus.

“As there are no constraints that prevent it, Nerlei believes that the obvious location of the new airport would be north of the River Tagus because that is where the majority of the population and economic activity that most uses, and will use, this infrastructure,” António Poças told Lusa.

In a written reply, the president of Nerlei stressed that, with this location, “the construction of new access infrastructures would be avoided, which require huge investments, such as a new bridge across the Tagus”.

António Poças considered, on the other hand, that the country is “already losing” and will “lose even more because this decision was not taken several years ago”.

“Let’s listen to those who should be heard, seek possible consensus, but let’s make a decision,” said the head of Nerlei, stressing that “there is no reason to postpone this decision, which is strategic for the country’s development and should be made based on criteria of economic, environmental and financial efficiency, and thought of in the long term.

On Thursday, the prime minister, socialist António Costa, ordered the revocation of the order that indicated the municipalities of Montijo and Alcochete as locations for the new airport solution for the Lisbon region, overruling Infrastructure Minister Pedro Nuno Santos, who the day before presented this proposal.

The solution suggested was to go ahead with the project for a new airport in Montijo to complement Lisbon’s current airport, to be operational by the end of 2026, with the two to close when the airport at Campo de Tiro de Alcochete is completed, foreseeably in 2035.

On the same day, António Costa said that the new airport solution for the Lisbon region must “work towards a technically, politically, environmentally and economically sustainable solution – a solution that is the object of a national consensus, namely with the largest opposition party”.

Meanwhile, the president of the Intermunicipal Community (CIM) of the Leiria Region, Gonçalo Lopes, has asked the government to consider the locations of Ota and Alverca for the future airport.

“It is the moment to be able to make the right decisions and implement them quickly. And therefore, our position – and which is already being discussed with other areas is that the government should, once it has opened a serious debate on this matter shortly, include again in the analysis the solution north of the Tagus”, in this case, Alverca and Ota, said Gonçalo Lopes, also Mayor of Leiria.

The mayor said the solution was the one that, from an economic and environmental point of view, “was for a long time, Ota, classified as one of the best proposals”.