Paulo Carmona Takes the Presidency of Infraestruturas de Portugal as IP's 2025 Net Result Hits €135M — Cresap Clears DGEG Chief to Replace Miguel Cruz
Cresap has cleared former DGEG chief Paulo Carmona as next president of Infraestruturas de Portugal, starting May. IP posts €135M 2025 net profit (+8.8%) — a record since 2015. Carmona inherits the TGV Porto–Lisboa line, Porto–Vigo, and the Lisboa–Madrid link with the Third Tagus Crossing.
The Commission for Recruitment and Selection to Public Administration (Cresap) has approved Paulo Carmona as the incoming president of Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) — the state-owned company that runs the country's roads and railways — with a May 2026 start date. Carmona replaces Miguel Cruz, whose mandate expired in late 2024 and who has stayed on in a pro-forma capacity waiting for the government to settle on a successor. The appointment lands the same week IP disclosed record 2025 financial results to the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários: €135 million net profit, up 8.8% year-on-year, the highest annual result since IP was created out of the Refer–Estradas de Portugal merger in 2015.
Who Paulo Carmona is
Carmona arrives from the Direcção-Geral de Energia e Geologia (DGEG), which he has led since September 2024. Educated in Business Administration and Management at the Universidade Católica, with a master's in Philosophy of Knowledge from the same institution and an executive programme at AESE Business School (2012), his corporate track runs through the fuel and energy sector: CEO of Prio between 2006 and 2009, president of the Entidade Nacional para o Mercado dos Combustíveis (ENMC) from 2013 to 2016, strategic consultant to ERSE — the Entidade Reguladora dos Serviços Energéticos — between October 2022 and September 2024 before the DGEG appointment.
Alongside the regulated-energy career he has been a visible presence in the employer and civil-society circuit: president of the Fórum dos Administradores e Gestores de Empresas (FBA) from 2019 to 2025, president of the Associação Portuguesa dos Contribuintes between October 2023 and September 2024, and co-founder of the civic movement Europa e Liberdade, positioned as an independent platform for reflection on Portuguese political questions. The profile is unusual for IP — successive presidents have come from inside rail or roads — but aligns with the government's signalling that it wants a manager with regulatory-sector scar tissue to unlock the decision-making logjam around the high-speed rail programme.
A mandate defined by rail
Three dossiers define the next IP presidency.
The Porto–Lisboa high-speed line (TGV) — the heaviest file on the desk. The Porto–Soure stretch is in procurement under an availability-payment concession; the Soure–Lisboa stretch is in advanced planning. The Ministério das Infraestruturas has committed to a first train running Porto–Coimbra before the end of the current legislature. Slippage in procurement timelines will land on Carmona's watch.
The Porto–Vigo line. The Iberian high-speed corridor to Galicia runs in parallel with the TGV contracts, and Portugal's share of the line requires coordinated environmental, expropriation and engineering decisions that will bleed into Spanish counterparts' timelines.
The Lisboa–Madrid line and the Third Tagus Crossing. The 2019 government decision to site the new Lisbon airport at Alcochete is now load-bearing on IP's delivery of the Terceira Travessia do Tejo (TTT), which carries both the new airport access and the Madrid connection. The crossing's design, financing structure and integration with Metro de Lisboa's Expansion are inside Carmona's mandate.
Behind those three headliners sit the residual investments of the Plano Ferroviário Nacional — electrification of the Linha do Oeste, the signalling programme on the Linha do Norte, the new stations at Sete Rios and Gaia — and road programmes, including PRR-supported motorway extensions and the repair campaign for damage caused by Storms Kristin, Leonardo and Marta in January and February.
The 2025 numbers Carmona inherits
IP's 2025 financial report, filed this week with the CMVM, shows a company in its best shape since creation. Net profit reached €135 million (+8.8%) — an €11 million improvement on 2024's €124 million and a record since the 2015 Refer–EP merger. Operating result totalled €319 million. Operating expenses landed at €1.234 billion, up €16 million on the year, with rail and road maintenance alone accounting for €245 million (+€17 million) — the dominant cost-line pressure.
On the revenue side, the picture is bifurcated. The Road Service Assignment — the state concession that pays IP for the availability of the national motorway network — contributed an additional €19 million, and the Railway Infrastructure Tariff paid by CP and private operators added another €8 million. Against that, IP's own toll revenues fell €21 million as the post-pandemic motorway traffic plateau set in. The profit lift came less from the top line and more from lower financial and tax costs: IP's long-running deleveraging programme and the post-2024 IRC tax-base work have started to show through on the bottom line.
What Cruz leaves behind
Miguel Cruz leaves IP as a smaller, leaner balance sheet than he inherited in 2019 — the company has used the 2022–2025 profit run to retire subsidised debt on the road concession — but with unresolved files. The TGV Porto–Soure procurement has slipped once already; the Plano Ferroviário Nacional has had to be recomposed twice as the 2023 PRR milestone deadlines slipped into 2025 and now 2026; and the road-damage repair campaign from Storm Marta has consumed more emergency engineering capacity than the annual budget allows. The November 2025 Financial Stability Report from Bank of Portugal flagged IP's exposure to concessionaire counterparty risk as a systemically small but rising concern.
Parliament, Cresap and the politics of the appointment
Cresap's approval is not rubber-stamp. The commission scored Carmona on regulatory experience, public-administration track record, sector-financial fluency and absence of conflicts of interest; its favourable report now goes to the Ministério das Infraestruturas, which will issue the formal appointment decree. The government's PSD–CDS-PP majority does not require parliamentary confirmation of IP presidents, but the opposition will have ample opportunity to question Carmona in committee — the AR's Infraestrutura committee has already signalled hearings on the TGV dossier into June. Livre and Bloco de Esquerda have pre-announced questions on the civic-movement affiliations, and on the timing relative to the DGEG licensing dossiers still open on his current desk.
Why expats should pay attention
Three reasons this matters beyond the rail-watchers.
First, the TGV Porto–Lisbon line — and specifically the Porto–Coimbra first segment — will reset domestic intercity travel for foreign residents who split their week between the two cities, or who currently treat the Alfa Pendular as a 3-hour ceiling. A confirmed delivery date out of Carmona's first hundred days will tell the market whether to price a 2028–2029 service or a 2030-plus one.
Second, the Third Tagus Crossing determines the access story for the new Lisbon airport at Alcochete, which in turn drives the practical utility of any expat relocation plan that depends on Luís de Camões connectivity. No TTT, no airport on time, and the regional connectivity case for moving to the South Bank weakens.
Third, road-damage repairs matter in the Alentejo, the Centro interior and parts of the Douro where the storm clusters hit hardest and where most of IP's emergency repair programme is currently concentrated. An expat retiring to Vila Nova de Foz Côa or Castelo Branco will feel the IP backlog in the condition of the IP2, IP3 and IP6.
What to watch next
The formal appointment decree, which should land in Diário da República in the first week of May. The first public interview or committee appearance, where Carmona will need to take a position on TGV Porto–Soure delivery dates. IP's 2026 Q1 financial indicators, due in early June, which will show whether the 2025 profit run is the new baseline or a 2025 artefact. And the Cresap report itself, publishable in whole or in summary, which will carry the written reasons for the preferred-candidate decision.
Sources: ECO (“Paulo Carmona vai ser o novo presidente da Infraestruturas de Portugal”, 22 April 2026); Jornal de Negócios (“Lucro da Infraestruturas de Portugal sobe 8,8% para recorde de 135 milhões em 2025”, 22 April 2026); Cresap public materials; Diário da República (prior IP nomination decrees); IP's filing with the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (April 2026); Ministério das Infraestruturas public materials on the Plano Ferroviário Nacional and the Terceira Travessia do Tejo; Bank of Portugal Financial Stability Report (November 2025).
Related reading: Brussels Flags ‘Grave Deficiencies’ at Lisbon and Porto Airport Borders, Getting Around Portugal by Train, Ryanair Shifts Check-In to 60 Minutes From 10 November. On the rail-infrastructure side, Mota-Engil's €113.5 million Contumil-Ermesinde quadruplication on the Linha do Minho sets the latest reference. On the intercity-mobility side, our 2026 guide to long-distance buses (Rede Expressos, FlixBus, Sete Rios, the Terminal Intermodal de Campanhã and EVA Transportes) sets the latest reference.
