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During the debate on the Government Program, which takes place in the Azores parliament, in Horta, Bastos e Silva indicated that the three supports investigated by Brussels, worth 73 million euros, were considered “illegal public aid” because They “did not obtain prior authorization” from the European Commission.
In this sense, he continued, SATA “must return to the region” that amount, and without this process completed, the carrier will not be able to move towards its restructuring, a process that, Bastos e Silva acknowledges, will be “tough.”
“The decision was transmitted with great clarity, so that it would allow to build a solution that would not drag the bankruptcy of the company,” continued the government official, adding that negotiations continue with the community executive on the matter.
The European Commission’s decision was communicated to the executive on Friday, he added.
The regional secretary defended that “it would have been democratically essential to know the decision of Brussels before the elections of October 25” in the archipelago, so that “the bad political and management acts practiced in the past would have been democratically judged.”
And he affirmed: “However, in this parliament, in this parliament the vehement censorship of the management of the company in recent years is expressed, with incompetence, recklessness, stupidity, in a word, irresponsibility.”
The parliamentary leader of the PS / Açores and former head of the Regional Government, Vasco Cordeiro, asked the regional secretary if he could make the decision available to parliamentarians, saying that Bastos e Silva gave in to the “temptation” to keep the decision for a few days to announce it . only today (Wednesday).
According to the socialist, “there is no document” that supports the decision of Brussels, because the position adopted, recognized Bastos e Silva in the parliamentary debate, was communicated by videoconference.
“At the European level, there is a set of processes, in which this is included, that until they are concluded are governed by the rules of confidentiality. We are here and we will be to analyze this matter,” he added.
In mid-August, the European Commission gave a ‘green light’ to a Portuguese state aid of 133 million euros to the Azorean airline SATA, but opened an investigation to assess compliance with community standards in three public supports for the company.
SATA’s financial difficulties have persisted since at least 2014, when the airline wholly owned by the Regional Government of the Azores began to post losses, exacerbated for the time being by the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was due to these difficulties that the Autonomous Region of the Azores approved, since 2017, three capital increases in the airline, to fill the liquidity shortage.
These are the public supports that Brussels has investigated and defined as illegal, said the regional secretary of the new Azorean executive with the supervision of Finance.
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