The proposal was rejected with votes against from the PSD, PS, and CDS, abstention from Chega, and favorable votes from the IL, BE, PCP, Livre, and PAN.

In the debate on the proposal, which took place this Tuesday in parliament, the PCP deputy António Filipe had defended that the inquiry was necessary because the contours of the deal had been "completely hidden from the Portuguese people".

Among the various dimensions of the business that he had considered necessary to clarify, the deputy had highlighted in particular the fact that a report by the Court of Auditors on the privatization of ANA, released in January, revealed that the sale was made for 1,127 million euros, "a little more than a third" of the value that the Government had announced, of 3,080 million.

"There are three issues to be investigated here: the political responsibility of those who lied to the Portuguese people, the financial responsibility of Vinci, who may have received an illegal discount, and the responsibility of those who offered that discount," he said.

The proposal, however, was criticized by all parties to the right of the PS. The PSD deputy Gonçalo Lage joked that when he learned that the PCP was going to propose an inquiry committee, he thought it would be about the nationalization of EFACEC, in which "300 million euros of taxpayers' money disappeared without anyone really understanding what or how".

"Strange world this, where some of us prefer to prioritize cases where the State creates value for taxpayers instead of cases where the State destroys taxpayers' value," he said, arguing that the country benefited from the sale of ANA.

The parliamentary leader of the CDS, Paulo Núncio, also criticized the PCP's proposal, accusing the party of wanting to discuss "a privatization with 10 years by ideological choice" and of wanting to "renationalize everything that moves".

In turn, the PS deputy Hugo Costa stressed that the party has always criticized the privatization of ANA, but argued that the issue should be "debated and framed in a more comprehensive way", expressing his willingness to approve and hold all hearings on the subject within the parliamentary committee on Economy.

"The creation of a parliamentary inquiry committee on these terms would not allow for a comprehensive follow-up of the issue, since the object will naturally be closed, not safeguarding present and future debates on the national airport network, and its creation would be untimely," he said.

For Chega, deputy Filipe Melo said that, in principle, his party will not obstruct the PCP's proposal, as it is in favor of scrutiny. However, he accused the communists of coming forward with the initiative to "show that they are still alive" and of wanting to renationalize "everything that moves".

The IL deputy Carlos Guimarães Pinto also stated that his party would not vote against the proposal, because it advocates transparency, but considered that the suspicions underlying the initiative "are contaminated by the PCP's ideological bias".

On the contrary, BE deputy Isabel Pires considered that, with the Court of Auditors' report, it became "absolutely clear that the privatization of ANA only took into account the interests of private individuals", stressing that the party would vote in favor of the communist proposal because it cannot remain in the "vain indignation".

The Livre deputy Jorge Pinto compared the PCP's proposal with Chega's for a parliamentary inquiry into the case of the Portuguese-Brazilian twins, considering that the case under debate today is the one that "is stopping the country" and "postponing the decision on the construction of the new airport".

At the end of the debate, the PCP deputy António Filipe considered it "somewhat surprising" that there is a "convergence of votes between the PS and the PSD to prevent the holding of an inquiry committee".

Read Also: PSD, CDS, and PS against inquiry committee on ANA privatization (Portuguese version)