The parliamentary Transparency committee this Wednesday urged Chega deputy Filipe Melo to publicly retract his “inappropriate conduct” in a plenary session and to consider whether he is capable of continuing 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 today.
At issue is a complaint from PS deputy Isabel Moreira, who accused Filipe Melo of, in a plenary session on September 25, 2025, having made her “gestures considered disrespectful, namely, sending kisses, and making signs to shut up, 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 chamber, gestured with his mouth, contracting both lips and forming a small hole/opening between them”.
“He made signs to silence 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.
“Serious violation of the duties of deputies”
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 the 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 violation of the duties of deputies”, reads the opinion, considering that “his unacceptable and unworthy behavior takes on 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 time did he reveal regret or remorse for the inappropriate and inappropriate conduct he had undertaken, even though he admitted that he was wrong”.
The opinion states that not only did Filipe Melo not apologize “or regret his behavior”, but also “his conduct prior, contemporary and subsequent to the parliamentary hearing”, which took place on October 14, “demonstrates that there was no type of regret”.
The Transparency Commission therefore urges Filipe Melo “to consider, in conscience, whether he has 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 before 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.
Deputy Filipe Melo also has another complaint against him with the Transparency Commission, from PS deputy Eva Cruzeiro who accuses him of shouting racist and xenophobic words at her, and which has also already received a favorable order from the President of the Assembly of the Republic.
