Portugal Ratified the EU's Open-Skies Agreements With Ukraine and Armenia, and the Ukrainian Sky They Cover Has Been Shut to Civil Aircraft Since 2022

Two short decrees appeared in Friday's Diário da República (Official Gazette) with almost no accompanying text. Each runs to a single page. Between them they commit Portugal to a pair of treaties that rewrite the terms on which aircraft may fly between the European Union and two countries on its eastern edge, and one of those countries has had its airspace closed to civil aviation for more than four years.

Decreto do Presidente da República n.º 141/2026 ratifies the Common Aviation Area Agreement between the European Union and its member states and the Republic of Armenia, signed in Brussels on 15 November 2021. Decreto do Presidente da República n.º 142/2026 ratifies the equivalent agreement with Ukraine, signed in Kyiv on 12 October 2021. Both were approved by the Assembleia da República (Assembly of the Republic) on 17 July 2026, signed by President António José Martins Seguro on 28 August, countersigned by Prime Minister Luís Montenegro on 4 September, and published on 11 September.

The decrees are one page each because the work sits in the annexes. The two parliamentary resolutions that carry the treaty texts, Resolução da Assembleia da República n.º 247/2026 for Armenia and n.º 248/2026 for Ukraine, take up 103 pages of the gazette between them.

What a Common Aviation Area actually does

The Ukraine agreement replaces the patchwork of bilateral air services agreements that individual member states had signed with Kyiv. Article 34 says its provisions prevail over the relevant bilateral terms, with one carve-out: where an existing bilateral deal is more generous on ownership, traffic rights, capacity, frequencies, aircraft type, code sharing or fares, the more favourable term survives, provided it does not discriminate between member states.

In exchange for market access, Ukraine takes on the European Union's aviation rulebook. Annex I lists the instruments that must be written into Ukrainian law and applied, and the list is long enough to amount to a regulatory transplant.

The transition is staged. Annex III splits it into two transitional periods, with the European Commission running the assessments, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency running the safety standardisation inspections, and a Joint Committee taking the decision to move Ukraine from one stage to the next.

The three stages, and what each one unlocks

In the first transitional period, which is where the agreement currently sits, European Union carriers and carriers licensed by Ukraine may exercise unlimited traffic rights between any point in the European Union and any point in Ukraine. Ukraine also sits as an observer on the committee that governs airport slot allocation under Regulation 95/93.

To move to the second transitional period, Ukraine has to have transposed and be applying a named list of measures. It includes the Regulation that created the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, the technical rules for air operations and for flight crew, the accident investigation regulation, the airport charges and groundhandling directives, the slots regulation, the working time agreement for mobile civil aviation staff, the insurance requirements for carriers, the carrier liability regulation, the computerised reservation systems regulation, the whole Single European Sky package of 2004 and its implementing rules, and Regulation 261/2004, the passenger compensation rules that any traveller in Europe knows as the reason a cancelled flight can be worth 250, 400 or 600 euros. Ukraine must also apply operating licence rules substantially equivalent to Chapter II of Regulation 1008/2008.

Once the Joint Committee confirms that, member states begin recognising the Ukrainian certificates listed in Annex IV, starting with pilot licences, and Ukraine joins as an observer the committee that maintains the European Union's list of banned airlines.

Full application arrives only after Ukraine has transposed everything in Annex I and has organised its airspace in line with the European requirements for functional airspace blocks. At that point the market opens much further. European Union carriers may fly between points inside Ukraine, explicitly whether or not the service starts or ends in the European Union, and may use fifth-freedom rights through neighbourhood and European Common Aviation Area countries. Ukrainian carriers may fly between any points in the European Union, provided the service serves a point in Ukraine.

The part the treaty cannot fix

None of this is currently flyable. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency's Conflict Zone Information Bulletin for Ukraine, CZIB-2022-01R14, was first issued on 24 February 2022 and was last revised on 24 July 2026. It is valid until 31 January 2027 unless reviewed earlier, and its recommendation is unchanged: "Operators should not operate within the aforementioned airspace, including landing and departures from airports located in the affected airspace."

The airspace named covers essentially the whole country: the Lviv, Kyiv, Dnipro, Simferopol and Odesa flight information regions, plus the Kyiv upper information region. So Portugal has ratified a treaty granting unlimited traffic rights into a sky that no European operator is advised to enter.

That is less strange than it sounds. The agreement has been applied provisionally since 12 October 2021, under Council Decision (EU) 2021/1897, which approved signature and provisional application. Provisional application is what makes the framework live; ratification is what makes it permanent. Under Article 38, the agreement enters into force on the first day of the second month after the last diplomatic note is exchanged, and the note from the European Union side has to carry a confirmation from every single member state. Until the last one arrives, nothing enters into force.

Portugal has now filed its piece of that. The practical effect is that when Ukrainian airspace does reopen, there is no bilateral negotiation for Lisbon to conduct and no gap in the legal basis for a Lisbon to Kyiv service. Whether Humberto Delgado could absorb it is a separate question.

Armenia is on a slower clock

The Armenian agreement has a different shape. Its transitional annex withholds fifth-freedom rights until the Joint Committee adopts a decision confirming that Armenia meets the regulatory requirements, and that assessment is to be carried out no later than two years after the agreement enters into force. Until then, Armenian and European carriers keep only the fifth-freedom rights already granted under existing bilateral agreements, and Armenian carriers may not fly between points inside the European Union.

Aviation security is on a separate three-year clock. Armenia's compliance with the security legislation in Part C of Annex II is subject to its own assessment, due within three years of entry into force, and in the meantime Armenia is to apply Document 30 of the European Civil Aviation Conference. Only after that decision does the confidential part of the European security rulebook get handed over, and even then subject to an agreement on exchanging security-sensitive information.

What this means for foreign residents

• There is no new flight to book. Ukrainian airspace remains closed to civil aviation and the EASA bulletin advising against operating there runs to 31 January 2027 at least. The treaty removes a legal obstacle, not a physical one.
• Passenger compensation rules follow the market opening. Regulation 261/2004, itself overhauled in Brussels in June, is on the list Ukraine must transpose before it can move to the second transitional stage, so the compensation regime for delays and cancellations is built into the deal rather than left out of it.
• For Armenia, the change is real but narrow for now. Direct services between the European Union and Armenia operate, but the wider fifth-freedom rights are held back behind a compliance decision that has a two-year deadline running from entry into force, which has not happened yet.
• Either agreement can be walked away from. Article 37 of the Ukraine text lets either side give written notice at any time, with the agreement ending at midnight GMT at the end of the IATA traffic season in progress one year later.

The gazette gives no reason for the timing, and there is nothing in the two decrees to explain why a treaty signed in October 2021 reached the President's desk in August 2026. What the publication does establish is that Portugal is no longer one of the member states holding the process up.