The recommendations are part of an opinion approved Tuesday in the Transparency Committee of the parliament, with Chega being the sole dissenting vote, as detailed in a document accessed today.
The issue arises from a complaint by PS deputy Isabel Moreira, who accused Filipe Melo, during a plenary session on September 25, 2025, of making “disrespectful gestures, notably blowing kisses and signaling to keep quiet, in an alleged attempt to silence.”
The incident prompted the president of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, to request the Transparency Committee to launch an inquiry into Filipe Melo.
The opinion states that during the inquiry, it was “fully proven, not only documentarily but also by the confession of Melo himself,” that during the aforementioned plenary session, Filipe Melo, “after smiling and looking toward the left side of the chamber, gestured with his mouth, contracting both lips and forming a small opening between them.”
“He signaled to silence a deputy seated on the left side of the chamber by placing his index finger vertically on his lips and emitting a ‘shh’,” it describes.
The Transparency Committee holds that such actions “not only fail to preserve the dignity and credibility of the sovereign organ of the Assembly of the Republic” but also “compromise impartiality, impartial judgment in the conduct of proceedings by the Bureau, besides affecting the duty of respect due among deputies.”
“Thus, the Vice-President of the Bureau of the Assembly of the Republic, Deputy Filipe Melo, incurred a serious violation of the deputies’ duties,” the opinion reads, considering that “his unacceptable and unworthy behavior takes on special and marked gravity because it was committed in the exercise of his function as a member” of the parliamentary bureau.
The Transparency Committee notes that despite Filipe Melo claiming, in a closed-door hearing, that he had retracted his behavior, “the truth is that at no point did he show regret or remorse for the improper and inadequate conduct he had, even though he admitted to having erred.”
The opinion notes that not only did Filipe Melo not apologize “or express regret for his behavior,” but also “his previous, contemporary, and subsequent behaviors to the parliamentary hearing,” held on October 14, “demonstrate that there was no sign of remorse.”
The Transparency Committee thus urges Filipe Melo “to consider earnestly whether he has the actual conditions to continue exercising his functions as a member of the Bureau of the Assembly of the Republic.”
It also recommends that Filipe Melo “publicly retract by presenting a formal apology before the plenary of the Assembly of the Republic for the inappropriate conduct he displayed on the plenary session of September 25.”
To this end, the committee suggests that the president of the Assembly of the Republic “may grant, at the beginning of the plenary session in which the retraction is to occur and before the order of business scheduled for that session, an adequate amount of time for this purpose” to Deputy Filipe Melo.
Deputy Filipe Melo also faces another complaint in the Transparency Committee against him from PS deputy Eva Cruzeiro, who accuses him of yelling racist and xenophobic slurs at her, which also received a favorable ruling from the president of the Assembly of the Republic.
