Moedas marks post-election clarification meeting

Following requests for clarification on new information regarding the Elevador da Glória accident, Carlos Moedas called an extraordinary meeting of the Lisbon City Council this Monday for October 13, the day after the local elections.

All opposition councilors requested a meeting after new information regarding the accident that killed 16 people was reported on TVI. The request from councilors from the Socialist Party (PS), Livre, BE, and Cidadãos por Lisboa (Citizens for Lisbon) was made "following the falsehoods, omissions, and inconsistencies exposed by the media, as reported by the Mayor, other political leaders, and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Carris."

One of the pieces of information revealed by TVI that led to this request is the existence of a letter from the Carris Workers' Commission, sent to Moedas on September 20, 2023, warning of "poor vehicle maintenance" and the company's "negligence in health and safety." This document "flatly contradicts the public statements of the President and other political officials, who claimed to have never received information about problems with the Glória Elevator," the councilors argue.

Another piece of information was the occurrence of two accidents prior to the Elevador da Glória, one in October 2024 and another in May 2025, confirmed by Carris, which the opposition councilors accuse of having been “publicly denied by the President of the Board of Directors of Carris and by the Vice-President of the City Council”.

The councilors also want to discuss the fact that the October 2024 accident was "effectively reported and discussed at the Assessment and Risk Committee," something that "contradicts the statements of the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Carris, who claimed to have no knowledge of any maintenance problems," they add.

Finally, these councilors also want clarification after it was reported that frequent elevator maintenance included operations such as "tightening the elevators," "tying points on elevators 1 and 2," and "tightening the tensioner between elevators 1 and 2." Moedas' opposition claims that this information "contradicts the information provided by the same official, who stated that these elements were only checked during general inspections (every 4 years) or when the cable was replaced (every 600 days)."

The PCP councillors signed another request in which they say that the report in question “brought to light information previously unknown to the Lisbon City Council, information that contradicts other information previously provided to the municipal executive and publicly by the Mayor and the Board of Directors of Carris.”