The government determined, in a decree published this Monday in the Official Gazette of the Union, to “initiate a negotiation procedure” with ANA, the concessionaire of national airports, to amend Annex 16 of the concession contract, which defines the technical specifications of the new Lisbon airport (NAL).

In this process, the government understood that it was “to dispense with the constitution of a negotiating committee” regarding the proposed amendments presented by ANA following the Consultation Report, which involve issues such as the size of the runways, the separation between them, and the contact positions.

The order, signed by the Secretaries of State for Finance and for Finance and Infrastructure, states that “the negotiation of amendments to Annex 16 of the concession contract must be exclusively technical in nature, and any possible financial repercussions must be discussed during the negotiation phase of the NAL contracts”.

Technical report

As part of the preparation of the application for the new airport that the Government has mandated for ANA, among the various reports that the concessionaire must submit is the technical report, which must be prepared taking into account certain defined technical specifications, which “have not been subject to any alteration since their preparation in 2012, in the context of the signing of the concession contract”.

Thus, entities such as the National Civil Aviation Authority, NAV Portugal and representatives of airlines, namely TAP and IATA, had already signaled the need for changes, with ANA proposing a set of optimizations within the scope of the Consultation Report. Of the nine proposed amendments submitted, seven were well received, with two – requirements for catering facilities and autonomy of fuel facilities – receiving reservations.

“As the minimum specifications are contractually enshrined in Annex 16 to the concession contract, their update necessarily implies a contractual amendment,” says the government, adding that within the PPP regime, “a negotiation committee must be established whenever the renegotiation of contracts constituting a public-private partnership is at stake.” However, it emphasises that the same regime allows this negotiation committee to be dispensed with in exceptional and duly justified cases.

“In this specific case, there is broad technical consensus regarding the need to update the minimum specifications, as well as the essential changes proposed by the concessionaire,” and that “they are exclusively technical in nature, aiming only to update the minimum specifications and allow the concessionaire to prepare the NAL master plan and the Technical Report with reference to technical specifications appropriate to the intended size and quality of service,” the dispatch also states.

“The limitation of the scope of negotiation to the technical level and the particularly low complexity of the negotiation of the technical matters in question justifies dispensing with the establishment of a negotiating committee,” the Executive also states, adding that the amendment to Annex 16 “will be implemented through an agreement between the parties (…), with no right, in any case, to any eventual restoration of financial equilibrium, nor any right to compensation or remuneration, on the part of the concessionaire.”