TAP Air Portugal Closes Out Its Brussels Restructuring Plan and Wires €24.99 Million Back to the State — SPdH and Cateringpor Sales Tick the Last Boxes

TAP Air Portugal, Portugal's flag carrier, confirmed on Friday 12 June 2026 that it has formally closed the financial restructuring plan agreed with the European Commission in December 2021 and has reimbursed €24.99 million to the Portuguese State through a capital reduction operation registered with the Conservatória do Registo Comercial (Commercial Registry) this week. The amount represents the residual obligation of the State to disburse a final tranche of the €2.55 billion restructuring package authorised by Brussels under State-aid rules, now extinguished by mutual write-off and capital reduction rather than fresh cash flowing in either direction.

The capital reduction follows the path set out by Decreto-Lei (Decree-Law) 22/2024, which authorised the Ministério das Finanças (Ministry of Finance) to cut TAP's share capital by two-thirds — from €980 million to €313.6 million — to absorb accumulated losses and clean up the balance sheet ahead of a privatisation that the government has scheduled for the second half of 2026. Of the €666.4 million capital take-down, €323.4 million was absorbed by historic losses and €343 million writes off the remaining State capital subscription commitment, of which €24.99 million is the cash leg returned this week.

Two long-running disposals locked the European Commission's final restructuring conditions into place over the past 30 days. TAP closed the sale of its 49.9% holding in SPdH — Serviços Portugueses de Handling (the former Groundforce ground-handling business) to Menzies Aviation Portugal, the local subsidiary of UK-based aviation services group Menzies. And it transferred its 51% controlling stake in Cateringpor, the in-flight catering operator at Humberto Delgado airport, to existing minority shareholder Gate Gourmet, the Swiss-headquartered catering specialist. The two divestments, on which TAP had secured a six-month extension to a 31 December 2025 Brussels deadline, were both required by the original restructuring agreement to dilute TAP's vertical integration in the Lisbon hub.

With the restructuring formally closed, attention now shifts to the privatisation file that the Conselho de Ministros (Council of Ministers) approved in March 2026. The State plans to sell a 44.9% stake in TAP SGPS, the holding company, with a further 5% reserved for employees at a discounted price and the State retaining a 50.1% blocking minority for at least three years. The expression-of-interest phase, which closed on 30 April, drew non-binding bids from Lufthansa Group, the IAG-Air France-KLM tandem (lodged separately), and Turkish Airlines; binding offers are due by 15 September.

Portugal's 2024 attempt at the same sale collapsed in November of that year when the previous government fell, and Brussels has made clear that any further slippage will trigger a fresh review of the State-aid clearance. The Ministério das Finanças confirmed in a written statement that the State accounting treatment of the €24.99 million reimbursement will land in the June 2026 Conta Geral do Estado (General Account of the State) as a non-tax revenue item, with no impact on the 2026 budget deficit target that the Banco de Portugal (Bank of Portugal) flagged this week as fragile.