It wasnât mine. It was one of my family memberâs.
If your renewal comes up shortly, you could either wait to see if the next quarter opens up mid-end March. Or is it difficult to go online and see if it has opened already? It either would allow you to proceed, or not. This is what happened to all who had expired cards before Q1 2023 who went online.
You are the best judge. But the prognosis for 2023 seems positive.
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If the renewal rules change in the manner proposed, there is little chance of automatic online renewal continuing 
I still have 4 months left before the tĂtulo expires so I guess I will have to wait and see. I tried a couple of times but so far it is not letting me proceed with the auto renewalâŠ
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Good morning! I am still struggling to receive my card 6 weeks after the completed status on the automated renewal. Has anyone faced a similar situation? On the phone SEF is saying that card was sent for emission to casa das moedas with no further information about the dates etc. Many Thanks!
Lucky you. Unfortunately we have lived all over the world so police reportsâŠ.
Hi all, my 2-year permit is expiring on June 22nd, and whenever I try to renew it automatically the website states: Your residence permit does not allow you to use of the âautomatic renewalâ feature.
My permit (self employed/employed professional activity) should allow me to use the automatic renewal feature, and I am at a loss as to what to do now (it is not possible to schedule an appointment on the website either, and nobody is picking up the phone).
Has anyone had a situation like that? Any advice please?
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The online renewals were for persons with expiring cards in the 1st trimester (until 31 March 2023), and they said they would extend further. Another person is in the same situation (ARI Holders (Stage 5) - #315 by IME) and so far has reported that the system does not allow him to proceed with online renewal. Only you can keep trying to see when it opens up, although the last time it was reported by SEF a few days before it opened up.
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Indeed as @Onward pointed out, renewal only possible for residence permits expiring up until March 31st. Letâs see what will happen after that dateâŠ
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Thanks @Onward @IME makes me feel a bit better knowing itâs not just my application. Fingers crossed it works on the 1st, without the need to hire a lawyer to help.
Hi @bharat â Iâm in the same boat as you. Hereâs my timeline:
June 2022: My ARI residence permit expired
July 2022: Got a biometrics appointment in a far-flung corner of the country, paid the fees (~3100âŹ)
October 2022: My lawyer mailed the missing documents to the SEF office
Since then: Crickets (my laywers claim that they call SEF all day long and can never get through, although some posts in this forum seem to contradict that)
I went to the SEF website in January and tried to initiate automatic renewal. Remarkably, the site let me submit the request. But then it generated a payment request for the same amount that I paid in October. I decided not to double pay â Iâm not that desperate yet â and the next day the status for the request was changed to âCancelled by SEF.â I have no idea if that move actually worsened the outlook for my existing application.
@bharat, have you really been waiting since July for a simple renewal? Thatâs so infuriating. Did you also have to send documents to the office after your appointment, or did you hand over everything at the appointment? Do you live in Portugal, and if so, how has this affected your travel?
Is there anyone here who applied for renewal in 2022 and receied their cards since then? If so, can you please share how long you waited?
Hi everyone. I have a question for people with expired ARI permits who actually live in Portugal.
As you know, the word on the street is that flying out Schengen and then back in and can be risky. The safest way to do it is to leave and re-enter Schengen exclusively on TAP through Portuguese airports. You are unlikely to run into trouble with either the airline staff upon check-in or SEF at the Portuguese border. They know about the fâ â â ed up situation with residence permits.
But flying TAP isnât always feasible because of routing, schedules, availability or fares.
In October I flew to and from the US from Portugal on British Airways, connecting in London. When I checked in for the return flight, the airline agent asked for a visa or residence permit. Because I hold a US passport, I was surprised by that questions and thought she was mistaken. But she insisted. Maybe it is now required for all flights originating in Schengen to show a Schegen passport, visa or residence card? Anyway, I presented my expired permit, she glanced at it, seemed to miss the date, and let me check in.
After close call, I asked my lawyers to draft a letter in English explaining that I am still a legal resident of Portugal despite the expiration date on my card. The letter is quite thick and includes a translation in English of the latest decree that extends all expired cardsâ validity to 31/12/23.
But I have two more upcoming trips that Iâm worried about:
-
In May, Iâll be flying to Los Angeles and back on BA, and might again be asked by the airline agent for proof of residency. I have no idea if theyâll notice the expiration date and/or accept my lawyerâs letter (imagine an airline employee trying to make sense of a 50-page letter from a Portuguese lawyer as 100 annoyed people wait behind me)
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In June, I wll be flying from Lisbon to Bogota through Madrid. So I need to worry about the border checks going out of and back into Spain, as well as the airline check-in process for the return flight.
My lawyers have been totally unhelpful on this matter and have said that Schengen member states have âcomplete freedomâ to decide whether or not to honor the Portuguese decree that extended the validity of expired Portugese residence cards. Iâm pretty sure this is false. The Schengen Agreement requires that Member States allow passage to holders of residence permits. The country that issues a residence permit is the only party that can set the terms of the permit. So if Portugal says a residence permit is valid, my understanding is that other Schengen states should be obliged to honor it.
But how that plays out at the border is anyoneâs guess.
Thereâs such a lack of information about all this. Iâve only found suppoisiton and urban legends. One article says that a person in this situation was even arrested when transitting through Germany.
Whatâs been your experience? Have you crossed into and of Schengen through a country other than Portugal, or have you had problems with airline staff when checking into flights? Iâd love to get as much concrete information as possible out there. Thanks!
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Both my husband and I did our biometrics in July last year (him in Coimbra and me in PortimĂŁo). Our cards expired in 2021 and we live in Portugal full time. He received his new card in December â22 and I received mine at the beginning of March this year. The cards are dated from the day of payment for another 2 years. This is our last renewal for ARI, so we now are about to apply for the 5 year residency and we also plan to apply for citizenship.
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Thanks for the info! Really helps
Did everyone see the news about Costaâs speech yesterday about the end of the ARI program?
Based on these reports, it sounds like the ARI permit type wonât even be grandfathered in for renewals for those of us who already have it. The Portugal Resident reports that: âExisting golden visas will be converted into normal residency permits. New requests will be evaluated according to existing laws.â
I wonder what that means. Sounds messy. I assume that many people with ARI permits who live in Portugal could techncially switch to D7, but I have no idea if the new APMA will allow a seamless process to switch the residence permit type, or if weâll have to fly back to our home countries.
Has anyone tried to switch from ARI to D7?
@IME Hi! I did, but it still is showing the same error message⊠I think I need to start looking for a lawyer to help me with this.
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@nik Same here but my residence permit expires 3 weeks after yours. I do not think you need a lawyer (as of yet but who knows, right?)
Itâs still more than 3 months of validity and I know from my conversation with SEF last month that they havenât opened the renewal options for cards expiring after March 31st.
Finger crossed they will soonâŠ
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Thanks for asking this. Iâm in the same boat. My attorney has been adamant that I donât transit through another Schengen country, which seems to back up what youâre being told. (Plus I was turned away from Germany once during the pandemic, so not sure where you heard that transit for residents has to be allowed). Anyways Iâll be traveling to the UK later in the month and have been assured that entering from London on TP wonât be a problem. Still a bit nervous but Iâm hoping to have proof of renewal by then.
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Hi, @Jae1012. I think youâll be totally fine flying TAP. Itâs government-owned and theyâre very much aware of the situation. I flew them three times leaving and re-entering Schengen without issue.
As for problems leaving and entering Schengen through other countries, whatâs your nationality? Iâm American so my passport entitles me to be present inside Schengen for 90 out of 180 days without a visa. This is where it gets complicated.
Article 6(2) of EU Regulation 2016/399 states that "Periods of stay authorised under a residence permit or a long-stay visa shall not be taken into account in the calculation of the duration of stay on the territory of the Member States.â Additionally, Article 6(5)(b) states that individuals âwho hold a residence permit or a long-stay visa shall be authorised to enter the territory of the other Member States for transit purposes so that they may reach the territory of the Member State which issued the residence permit or the long-stay visa.â Article 2(16)(a) defines residence permits as âall permits issued by Member StatesâŠâ
The expiration date on my residence card is in June 2022. But the residence permit actually expires on 31 Dec. 2023, under the terms of Article 16, No 2 of Decree Law No. 10-A/2020 of 13/3/2020, which was renewed by Article 16, No. 8 of Decree-Law No. 90/2022 of 30/12/2022.
Furthermore, I had a renewal biometric appointment in August 2022. Art.Âș 78.Âș, nÂș 7 of Lei 23/2007 (Lei de Estrangeiros) states: " O recibo do pedido de renovação de autorização de residĂȘncia produz os mesmos efeitos do tĂtulo de residĂȘncia durante um prazo de 60 dias, renovĂĄvel." In English: " The receipt of the application for renewal of the residence permit has the same effects as the residence permit for a renewable period of 60 days."
In other words, if a border agent in in, say, Germany, looks at my passport and residence permit says, âYou have spent 160 out of the past 180 days in Schengen, but your residence permit is expired, I am taking you to airport jail,â I think I can say, âAll of my 160 days in Schengen were spent in Portugal, where my stay has been authorized under a residence permit, both because Portuguese law extended the validity of my permit that was supposed to expire in June 2022, and because the receipt for my renewal request from August 2022 is also considered a valid permit under Portuguese law.â
This is not exactly a conversation that I want to have on a tight layover. But I travel constantly for work and taking TAP isnât always feasible. So letâs see how it goes. Iâm going to try to get my lawyer to draft a letter covering these points. And Iâm keeping my fingers crossed that some countries, including Spain, are still much laxer than their northern neighbors .
Hope this helps!
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