The secretariat’s position comes after a joint document from several ministries, according to which this is mandatory for all passengers to or stop at airports in mainland Portugal, including Madeira and the Azores.
According to this joint note, both passengers and companies incur fines which, in the case of passengers, vary between 300 and 800 euros. For companies, the fees range from 20 to 40 thousand euros.
The tourism secretariat cites a communication from the office of the Minister of Internal Administration, sent to the secretariat last December, according to which the location document must be completed only by passengers on flights to or from mainland Portugal or passengers on cruise ships that dock at the terminals located in mainland Portugal.
Completion of the document is not mandatory for passengers on domestic flights.
On Friday, ANA had already been informed of this obligation by the National Civil Aviation Authority, contradicting what the Ministry had said to the Secretary of Tourism in December.
The secretariat sent letters to the Ministry of Internal Administration, the Ministry of Health and the Assistant Secretary of State and Communications, as well as to ANAC, informing the remaining communications, noting that the same is not required for passengers from the mainland. who travel between, for example, Lisbon and Porto.
She also claims that the companies will not be aware of the situation yet.
In the letters sent, the SRTC defends that there is “antagonistic duplicity of responses on the part of the Government of the Republic, to the entities that requested it – ANAC and the Regional Government of Madeira”, which is a “generator of various entropies”.