Lisbon, Sept, 17, 2025 (Lusa) - The MPs on the Budget and Finance Committee on Wednesday approved the hearings of the Competition Authority, the Bank of Portugal and the Portuguese Banking Association on the statute of limitations for fines imposed on banks in the case known as the "banking cartel".
Today, the PS, PCP and Chega voted on requests to hear various entities on the case known as the “banking cartel” and the statute of limitations on the €225 million fines imposed by the Competition Authority on the banks (so they won't pay any money).
Due to disagreements between the parliamentary groups over the entities to be heard (namely, whether or not to call the main banks individually, an issue on which PS was in favour and PSD was against), the vote on some requests was split.
Thus, it was approved to call the Bank of Portugal (BdP), the Competition Authority (AdC) and the Portuguese Banking Association (APB) to hearings.
The hearings of Caixa Geral de Depósitos, BCP, Santander Totta and BPI, proposed by the PS, were rejected.
In September 2024, the Competition Court confirmed the fines of €225 million imposed by the Competition Authority on 11 banks, ruling that it had been proven that, between 2002 and 2013, there was "collusion" to exchange information on loans and that they "aligned commercial practices", distorting competition.
The banks appealed, and the Court of Appeal declared the administrative offence statute-barred, taking into account the time during which there were matters before the European Court of Justice. Appeals to the Constitutional Court were also rejected. In other words, the fines were definitively cancelled.
In July, in parliament, the president of the Competition Authority said that the courts had not absolved the banks of their offences and on the subject of the fines' statute of limitations, he said that there was "a significant contradiction" in the Court of Appeal's case law.
However, he added that in the future this problem would not arise in new cases, as the 2022 amendment to the Competition Law makes it clear that the statute of limitations is suspended as long as there is a judicial appeal.
Asked whether it would be important to have an interpretative law to clarify that cases that have already begun are suspended while they are being heard by the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Competition Authority's president said that this was up to parliament as the legislator.
IM/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
