Conselho de Ministros Earmarks €4.5 Million to Clear the Campo de Tiro de Alcochete for the €8.5 Billion Aeroporto Luís de Camões

The Conselho de Ministros on Friday 29 May approved up to €4.5 million to demilitarise the Campo de Tiro de Alcochete, the military training range whose site is reserved for Portugal's future Aeroporto Luís de Camões. The envelope funds the detection and inactivation of unexploded ordnance — deteção e inativação de engenhos explosivos — and the safe preparation of terrain still classified for military use.

The cash unlocks the first concrete groundwork on a project priced at €8.5 billion, scheduled to open in 2037 with an initial capacity of 45 million passengers and a 2060 design ceiling near 52 million. ANA - Aeroportos de Portugal, the Vinci-controlled concessionaire, cannot push its technical and environmental studies into the field-work phase until the Força Aérea Portuguesa hands over a deconfliction-cleared site.

Friday's decree slots into a wider relocation choreography. In March 2026 the Government formalised the move of the Força Aérea training range from Alcochete to Alter do Chão in the Portalegre interior, a site selected for its lower-density airspace and existing military footprint. Defence Minister Nuno Melo confirmed the receiver location as part of the same package.

For Alcochete municipality, the release ends years of speculation over when machinery would actually cross the wire. The Câmara has long argued that the limbo around the campo — neither active enough for live training nor ceded to ANA for survey work — froze landside infrastructure planning along the A12 corridor connecting Setúbal to the future terminal. The Lisboa-Évora high-speed rail spur and a planned new Tejo crossing both feed Luís de Camões traffic projections.

The €8.5 billion envelope on the project covers terminal construction, runway capacity for widebody Lisbon-Atlantic traffic, the Lisbon-spur rail station and the cargo platform that will absorb traffic currently flowing through Humberto Delgado. ANA has previously signalled that without an early site handover, the shovel-ready runway date slips past 2030 — which would compound the saturação estrutural problem aviation veterans flagged at Humberto Delgado earlier this week.

The decree authorises the Ministério da Defesa Nacional to contract explosive-clearance specialists directly, bypassing the standard public-procurement timetable on safety grounds. The work involves grid-sweeping decades of fragmented training-round residue across the campo, marking and removing detected ordnance, and certifying parcels as airport-ready before ANA's environmental impact assessment teams move in. The Força Aérea is expected to retain a small caretaker presence until certified handover.

The next milestone is the Conselho de Ministros vote on the airport concession addendum, which extends ANA's Humberto Delgado contract to absorb the Luís de Camões build-out under the same regulatory perimeter. The Ministério das Infraestruturas has previously indicated the addendum will reach the Council before the summer break.

For travellers and aviation watchers, Friday's €4.5 million release is the smallest line in a chain of decisions worth single-digit billions — but it is the one that takes the project from paper to ground. The first ordnance-clearance contracts are expected to award before the end of June 2026.