Wdyt? I am not local, I wonder if people more familiar with different political parties can comment on what this election means for the citizenship by investment program.
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As my lawyer frequently reminds me, Portugal Golden Visa is a residence by investment program, not a citizenship by investment program.
Reports say that AD won a greater share than they currently hold, which would presumably mean they would have additional power to pursue their agenda, though Montenegro continues to refuse to work with Chega, so some degree of compromise will likely be needed as before.
This may not be the worst possible outcome, but given that AD’s stated agenda is to increase the residence period and physical presence requirements before immigrants are allowed to apply for citizenship, it does appear to be bad news.
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This is a pretty good summary of the election result itself and shifts in the political power balance:
It’s hard to predict the exact impact on the ARI, as on the one hand AD and Chaga have stricter stances on immigration and granting of citizenship but are also the biggest supporters of the ARI.
My bet would be that we’ll see a slight increase in time before qualifying for citizenship (maybe 7 years) but that holding legal residence through ARI and meeting the 7 days per year presence requirement will still lead to citizenship as before.
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We’re also “predicting” here on the original thread 
Thanks for the explanation. But will this change of length (from 5 to 7 years) impact retrospectively to current ARI holders?
We are discussing that in the thread dedicated to that topic… see my post above yours.
I just got an email from “The Golden Portugal” claiming that
The news just came out that AD will form a coalition with Chega
However I cannot find any news articles to substantiate this claim.
I guess they have better inside sources than all of Portuguese news media 
I see they updated the article on their site to remove the part about Chega: Portugal Election & Visa Changes | The Golden Portugal
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I love this quote here:
“Investor Confidence Remains High : Portugal continues to offer one of the most reliable investment landscapes in the EU, particularly with the Golden Visa fund route.”
Scary to think what the rest of the EU looks like for investments 
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Whilst not the best outcome, I don’t see a high change of risk for several reasons:
- It’s Portugal, history says the government will likely collapse soon, hopefully before they try to retroactively change this
- Whilst others say it’s Residence by Investment, not Citizenship, a change will trigger lawsuits, surprisingly most of the time Portugal has seemed to “do the right thing” and grandfather, and there’s not an unreasonable chance that ARI or other people who are already resident will be grandfathered, but new people may not.
- Even if the worst case happens and the rules make bad changes (beyond the 7 year suggestions above), governments typically swing left/right every few years, so a reasonable change of repeal, remember the previous government included wait-time so good things can happen in future
- As others said, the new government seems anti-immigration, pro-ARI, so maybe they’ll carve out attracting us talented and wealthy investors and not impact our citizenship, e.g. 5 year citizen remains for people who invest in Portugal and create jobs.
Overall it might depend on when you would have been eligible, I would be eligible in Mid-2028, so the way I look at it, is there’s almost certainly another election (or 3) between now and then.
I hope they just make changes, but make them only apply to people who haven’t yet applied for residency or I hope if they do retroactive it will be defeated in the courts.
Great point. Maybe our collective energies would be best spent looking for dirt on the PM…