The point these articles always miss is that changing the law isn’t free. Even if MPs and government lawyers are already on salary, you still burn staff hours drafting multiple versions, pay external consultants, retrain IRN workers, redesign forms, change IT systems, and on and on. Not to mention dealing with court challenges. And then processing slows down for a while anyway.
I know this is fanciful thinking but if the problem is too many files and not enough people to process them, hiring more IRN staff would be cheaper and easier. Dare to dream …
It’s just propaganda. They’re not really changing the citizenship law just to “make things easier for IRN” just like 10 years isn’t really the “standard EU residence time”
These are just things they say to support their desired change, whose real purpose is to keep foreigners from becoming citizens.
I also do believe, based on past cases I have seen, even with expired cards, the application can succeed. This is because, from my perspective, when AIMA replied to IRN at an earlier stage of your application, your card hadn’t expired yet. Once IRN received that reply from AIMA, there would be no risk.
When the application system had 7 bubbles instead of the current 4; some already say that as long as you reach stage 6 (after AIMA has replied), you are safe even without a valid card.
However another possibility arises: if AIMA doesn’t reply fast enough and your card expires before that, would the application remain pending?
Hard to know what this person’s actual status was. I’m guessing that their card had expired AND they had applied for renewal, but not yet received a decision, or at least had an appointment in hand. If that’s the case they would still be legal as far as AIMA’s concerned. I believe the situation is much more complicated if you have not received your renewal appointment when the decision comes up. At the time of my decision, my card had been expired for nearly 6 months, with a renewal appointment scheduled for 2 months later. For a 2024 application I would definitely not take a chance on not renewing.
Sorry I missed this. I’ve posted my understanding of the basic legal position regarding the right to autonomous residence here Timeline For Family Reunification through GV - #24 by Lala. On my very quick reading, it looks like even if family members have reached the stage of holding autonomous residence, family renewals can still legally be tied to the same conditions applied to the primary. However this is only true for as long as the primary is subject to those conditions. Once the primary gains citizenship, what the family is left with is autonomous permits subject to general conditions, as we were. What I can confirm for sure is that no proof of the GV investments was required in our case.
Yes but important difference is with Art 15 you must physically live in Portugal most of the time, whereas dependents of GV only need the 7 days / year in Portugal.
Sorry, this wasn’t a follow on to my previous post - rather, a belated response to @kewalramanibharat. That said, the Article 15 permit is issued for 5 years. I don’t recall ever seeing a specified minimum residency to maintain it, although you need to have been “legally resident” for 5 years to get the permanent version. I’m sure it’s spelled out somewhere, but would imagine it’s not as strict as with eg the GV. I’ve seen a few cases where people claimed to have gotten Art 15 permits after their spouses got citizenship, but not enough to know if it’s a thing. I followed all the advice out there to get an Art 15 appointment and heard absolutely nothing back on it from AIMA.
The Portuguese Bar Association and the Portuguese National Registry Office (IRN) have created a channel to expedite 520,000 nationality applications.
…The new institutional communication mechanism, the OA – IRN channel, was created to streamline processes and detail difficulties reported by lawyers, especially in applications for Portuguese nationality. The tool is exclusively for professionals registered with the Bar Association and allows them to report delays, submit questions, and track the progress of applications with the institute responsible for public records in Portugal.
…Lawyer Elaine Linhares… points out that the volume of pending requests exceeds half a million. “There are more than 520,000 nationality applications stalled,” she states. And she adds: “This number relates to nationality applications in general, but there may be many more than that.”
516,000 pending [nationality] applications at the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN)
applications for citizenship through marriage account for approximately 14% of the total
looking at the IRN’s social balance sheets, it is clear that over the last five years the number of registry officers and registrars has been consistently decreasing, which has implications for the operational capacity of the services
I believe they are still using the H1 numbers for 2025, and IRN hasn’t updated them on their website. Here’s a link to their numbers back from June 2025 (same numbers)
Porto still is processing October 2023 applicants (and earlier ones); we have seen multiple late October approvals but have not seen November application getting approved; let’s see when we’ll start seeing November 2023 approvals.
Hopefully it starts right away as we have seen multiple late October (Oct 30) approvals.
Where do you track the dates? My guess is that it will jump into Nov/Dec/Jan at one go because of batching. I am seeing three teams at work - sweepers who are bringing up those who were somehow missed so everything from 2022 to late 2023 being taken to stage 3; beavers processing the vast number in the 90K range and a team doing straightforward cases which have taken in a few cases in the 113K range.
and may I ask how do you know that there are three teams, sweepers, beavers and the fast track team?? I have answered this question few times, I track the publicly posted approvals from fb and whatsapp groups. In the last 2 weeks I’ve seen numerous late October approvals, one of my friend did get her approval as well; except for one 11xx I’ve not seen an approval.
