Lufthansa Gets TAP’s Open Door

Portugal has chosen Lufthansa as the new shareholder in TAP, turning a long-debated reprivatisation into a named handover. The government announced that the German airline will take the 44.9% stake on offer in the Portuguese carrier, ahead of rival bidder Air France-KLM.

That does not mean TAP is about to stop being a political company. The state will keep the remaining stake apart from 5% reserved for employees, and even that small pocket of ownership comes with a revealing condition: under the privatisation decree-law cited by Euronews, Lufthansa can also buy any employee shares that go untaken. The structure offers staff a place in the deal, but not much power to shape it.

The choice matters because airline ownership is never just about balance sheets. National carriers carry routes, jobs, airport strategy and a country’s sense of connection to itself and outward. Governments often speak about these sales in the language of efficiency. What they are usually admitting, more quietly, is that the state no longer wants to bear the risk alone.

TAP’s finances help explain the urgency. Portuguese business media, cited by Euronews, reported that the airline lost €99.2 million in the first half of 2026, 40% worse than the same period a year earlier. That does not by itself tell the whole story of TAP’s value or prospects, but it makes the government’s search for an industrial partner easier to understand.

The deal is also not finished simply because a winner has been named. Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento has said the privatisation process is expected to take 18 to 24 months to complete and will require approval from the European Commission’s competition arm. In practice, that leaves plenty of room for conditions, delays and arguments over what Lufthansa will be allowed to control.

For now, the clearest fact is narrower than the rhetoric that usually surrounds national airline sales: Portugal has picked its buyer. The harder questions — over routes, staffing, influence and what kind of airline TAP becomes inside a larger group — have not been settled by that choice.