Lisbon, April 17, 2025 (Lusa) - The regulatory council of the body that oversees Portugal's media sector, ERC, has concluded that the schedule of broadcast electoral debates that has been laid out "does not violate" the principle of political and social representativeness of election candidates in accordance with the law, following a complaint by the far-right Chega party. The party had filed a complaint against public broadcaster RTP and private television companies SIC and TVI regarding the criteria used to define the debates between the leaders of parties putting up candidates in the snap legislative elections of 18 May 2025. In the decision, dated 16 April, the regulator rules that "the schedule of debates that has been set does not violate the principle of political and social representativeness of the candidates in the sense enshrined in Law no. 72-A/2015, of 23 July." The regulator points out "that the model of the debates resulted from a programme and timetable previously agreed between television operators, presented to the various candidates." It also reiterates, "in line with the decision set out in ERC deliberation/2025/126 (PLU-TV), that it is not within the ERC's sphere of decision to define who should represent a given candidacy, nor which representative may or may not be accepted by the television operators, provided that the provisions of Law no. 72-A/2015, of 23 July, which establishes the legal regime for news coverage during the electoral period, are safeguarded." The ERC found that the distribution of debates between candidates by the free-to-air and subscription-based unconditional access programme services "obeyed clearly identified editorial criteria" and that, "taking into account the programming of debates in which the CH party intervenes, the editorial criteria applied by the operators does not prejudice its candidacy in relation to the others." On Wednesday, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) had expressed the view that the broadcasting of debates on television channels that are not open signal could jeopardise the equal opportunities of the candidate parties. "In fact, the choice of broadcast medium (open or closed signal) may jeopardise the effective equality of opportunities for candidates enshrined in article 56 of the LEAR (Electoral Law of the Assembly of the Republic), according to which they have the right to equal treatment in order to carry out their electoral campaign freely and under the best conditions," the CNE stated. This position is set out in a decision, published in the minutes, regarding a complaint lodged by Chega against RTP, SIC and TVI for the "assumptions of the television debate," which the party says undermine the democratic principles of the electoral process. Specifically, Chega alleges unequal treatment, on the one hand, due to the choice of candidates to represent the governing right-of-centre Democratic Alliance (AD) in the debates - which this coalition has decided to split between Luís Montenegro, the prime minister and leader of the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), and Nuno Melo, leader of the smaller People's Party (CDS-PP) - but also due to the scheduling of the debates. Most of the debates are to be broadcast on RTP1, RTP3, SIC and TVI, but there are also debates scheduled for SIC Notícias and CNN Portugal, which are both closed-signal channels. ALU/ARO // ARO. Lusa