António Cotrim / Lusa
Filipe Melo, Chega deputy
“Unacceptable and undignified behavior”, points out the Transparency committee. When confronted, Chega’s deputy did not clarify whether he would apologize.
The parliamentary Transparency committee urged Chega’s deputy, Filipe Melo, to publicly retract the “inappropriate conduct” that he had in a plenary session and considering whether he has the conditions to continue as a member of the parliamentary board.
These recommendations are contained in an opinion, approved on Tuesday by the parliamentary Transparency committee only with Chega’s vote against, and to which Lusa had access. At issue is a complaint from PS deputy Isabel Moreirawho accused Filipe Melo of, in a plenary session on September 25, 2025, having made “gestures considered disrespectful, namely, , and made signs to silence him, in an alleged attempt to silence”.
The incident in question led the President of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, to ask the Transparency Commission to open an investigation into Filipe Melo.
The opinion states that, in this investigation, “it was fully proven, not only documentally but also by his own confession”, that, in the plenary session in question, Filipe Melo, “immediately after showing a smile and looking towards the bench on the left side of the hemicycle, gestured with his mouth, contracting both lips and forming a small hole/opening between them”.
“He made signs to shut up a deputy sitting on the bench on the left side of the chamber, placing his index finger, vertically, on his lips and emitting a ‘squeak’”, it is described.
For the Transparency Commission, these behaviors “not only do not preserve the dignity and credibility of the sovereign body Assembly of the Republic”, but also “compromise impartiality, impartiality and rigor in the conduct of work by the Bureau, in addition to affecting the duty of civility and the respect that is due between deputies”.
“Thus, the vice-president of the Board of the Assembly of the Republic, deputy Filipe Melo, committed a serious breach of the duties of deputies”, the opinion reads, considering that “its unacceptable and unworthy behavior assumes special and accentuated gravity as it was committed in the exercise of his role as a member of the parliamentary board.
The Transparency Commission states that, although Filipe Melo claimed, in a closed-door hearing, that he had retracted his behavior, “the truth is that at no point did he reveal regret or remorse for the improper and inappropriate conduct he had, even though he admitted that he was wrong.” In the opinion, it is stated that not only Filipe Melo did not apologize “or regret of his behavior”, as well as “his conduct prior, contemporary and subsequent to the parliamentary hearing”, which took place on October 14, “demonstrate that there was no type of regret”.
The Transparency Commission therefore urges Filipe Melo “to consider, in conscience, whether he has the effective conditions to continue exercising his functions as a member of the Board of the Assembly of the Republic”.
It also recommends Filipe Melo “to publicly recant, by presenting a formal apology to the plenary of the Assembly of the Republic, for the inappropriate conduct he had in the plenary session on September 25th”.
To this end, the commission suggests that the president of the Assembly of the Republic “may grant, at the beginning of the plenary in which the retraction is to take place and before the agenda scheduled for that session begins, adequate time for this purpose” to deputy Filipe Melo.
Confronted by journalists this Wednesday, the deputy did not clarify whether or not he would apologize for his actions.
Deputy Filipe Melo also has another complaint in the Transparency Committee against you, from the PS deputy Eva Cruzeiro who accuses him of having shouted racist and xenophobic words at him, such as , and which has also already received a favorable order from the President of the Assembly of the Republic.
