The 2025 numbers you shared are only for H1 2025 btw, so the decisions are not as bleak if you consider decisions of 95,906 is for only six months.
I’m sharing the press release from IRN on H1 numbers from July 2025 and you can see its still the same as the numbers you’ve shared: Nacionalidade: IRN recebeu mais de 1,5 milhões de pedidos em 5 anos
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Thanks - I should have realized the obvious answer was that they hadn’t updated the stats and also hadn’t bothered to note that it was a half year! Haphazard, performative transparency 
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From a PÚBLICO article today, spotted by @Fesenjoon over here…
The president of the IRN (National Institute of Registries and Notaries), Jorge Rodrigo da Ponte, estimates that the total number of pending Portuguese citizenship applications exceeds 522,000 . Meanwhile, the president of the Union of Registry and Notary Workers (STRN), Arménio Maximino, speaks of a backlog of more than 700,000 applications .
Just wait until the “early” Nationality application filing factories ramp up production 
Now think about how many Art 2 applications for minors u18 flow from an adult getting citizenship. It’s going to get way worse before it gets better. Actually, it’s just going to get way worse.
If you add the 500,000 citizenship applications with IRN to the 500,000 immigrations applications with AIMA, that means there are 1 million unresolved status files … in a country of only 10 million.
That’s roughly one outstanding file for every 10 Portuguese 
I honestly don’t know how they crawl their way out of it. The system is in slow collapse and the government is acting like they can just bluster their way out of it.
It’s super easy to solve backlogs if they honestly have a willing to solve it. The worst thing we have here is that there is zero honest willing to tackle the problem from the government’s side.
I suspect they won’t care to resolve it either.
Unlike the tenuous, irregular and unjust residency situations of MIs and CPLPs over the past few years (an A4 scrap of paper with not even a photo on it) - we’ll forget about GV/ARIs because everyone including the government forgets about us…
…immigrants waiting on citizenship pose no big societal problems for native Portuguese. They can work, access healthcare and education (in Portugal) and basically function in the country. So there would be no public clamour to fix a problem like years/decades-long queues for nationality - and thus no government interest either.
It’s doable in theory but not “super easy” at this kind of scale. Once backlogs hit hundreds of thousands, fixing them is politically brutal. It’d take intake freezes (that upset parties on your left), mass approvals (that upset parties on your right), admitting of years of administrative failure (that would upset government workers and unions) and a big increase in staffing and infrastructure (that would upset citizens already mad at their own budget starved public services). That’s a political minefield.
Do they really care about parties on left/right? They could upset the whole nation by letting people regularise via tourist visa and they continue treating their own citizens with the most horrible bureaucracy. I don’t think they give a damn about solving or improving. All words coming out from their mouth are hipocritical.
By saying “super easy”, i mean 6 months max.
IRN: 99% of 6.1 applications are stuck at aima’s response. If the top of govt sends a clear order to Aima, all responses will be done within days instead of 2-3 years.
Aima: residencies’ backlogs can be solved significantly by increasing a validity of cards. For example: GV should have cards with a validity of 5 years instead of 2 years. In addition to that, GV applicants should be allowed to complete the biometric at the portugueses embassies in their home countries. Why is is so difficult? People keep talking about AI this AI that, but when talking about aima’s biometric, AI seems to be non-existance. With improment of 2 things (biometric + card’s validity), GV’s backlogs could be severely reduced……..but the reality is zero willingness unfortunately…
I wish, but I don’t think it’s a matter of giving AIMA orders. That won’t magically turn into good decisions. Their IT, workflows and staffing aren’t built for the job at this scale. And you can’t fix that by fiat in a country like Portugal. You need to allocate budget, tough management, and even then it takes time.
There’s also a political contradiction no politician wants to admit. You can’t credibly tell voters there are “too many immigrants” while asking for more money to process immigrants faster. That’s why this is going in circles.
Anyway, seems I’ve already broken my New Year’s resolution of not complaining about AIMA 
You’re making a huge underestimation on their ability, their IT capacity and willingness to tackle the obstable. They surely could if they honestly wanted to.
In 2022, over 70k Ukrainians came and all got residencies within days/weeks. None of Ukraines complained about waiting for cards. I still remember clealy in my mind that i was about to do my first biometric in Portugal in 2022 and I saw the buses/vans of Aima to stop at the park and they took biometric and issued cards to Ukrainians on spot. I was observing all that and was shocked how the newcomers could get a special treatment with red carpets like that. And at that time, there were also 200k immigrants waiting for cards.
Hence, never underestimate how genius portuguese authority is!
I’m not the first one to say this, but I believe one specific reason why they want to almost halt the processing of existing applications is that they want the new law to come in place so that they can dismiss the applications done based on “time counted from online application - aka file-lock & expression of interest” route. Once they pass the law most probably they plan to dismiss all the nationality cases based on online applications.
If I’m not mistaken this route became available in Feb-Mar 2024 and Braga IRN has reached that point with approvals. Therefore they may not want a case getting approved based on 5 years residency via online application is it can become a reference point for others which can trigger cases.
Still even if this is the explanation, I can’t really see why 2023 applications are put on hold - while they should be processed as per the legislation.
Here’s theory on the apparent relationship between residency renewals and citizenship. AIMA hasn’t allocated sufficient human resources to answering the IRN queries re residency time, so there’s a massive backlog. But, when a file is accessed by AIMA for renewal processing the query pops up. They respond and continue with the renewal (because that’s the job 
). The result is that both come out around the same time. I guess it also means there’s not much incentive for AIMA to allocate people to the IRN queries. What it doesn’t explain is the massive variability between IRNs.
Do you think that if they pass the law, law can be applied retrospectively? Starting end of 2024, People applied citizenship based on file-lock. Until now, this counting based on file lock is still valid. If a new law can destroy a old law retrosepctively, then it is going to be really out of imigination.
Of course, if a new law is passed, it surely will prevent some certain people from applying based on file lock in the future. But people already applied in the past…
i cannot imagine how they stop that. It’s like you applied under 5 years. Now citizenship law changes to 7-10 years. Will they cancel your application due to new law? Very unconstitutional…
I wonder how much resources Aima need to allocate in order to respond IRN in a humanly timing manner. I am also curious how difficult the task is. Checking its own documents seem to be more challenging then checking the validity of criminal records/birth certificates from other countries? A “contagem do tempo” takes a year to be issued and on my CdT it shows a number of certificates 3xxx. I could intepret that in 2025 there were about three thousands CdT issued by Aima Lisboa. 3000/year is equivalent to 10/day. If Aima Lisboa allocates 2 staffs for CdT, then each staff has to solve 5 CdT/days. Now, 8 hours for 5 CdT i.e 1.5-2 hours for just 1 cdT- is it a demanding and hard working job? This productivity is absolutely killing me:cold_face:.
So I saw one email from a lawyer which might explain what’s going on; apparently while the counting of residency time by the application route is there, the current government never rolled-out the back-end legislation. So the lawyer was articulating while in theory the counting of residency from the application date exists as the legislation was never circulated, the lawyer was articulating that the law never fully came into force - it remained in the grey zone. He was pointing out that if the online route is removed, all the applications based on the online applications will become obsolete. He said this is most likely the reason why even the current applications are nearly stalled.
Still I can’t understand why applications made on a regular 5 year case is stalled.
Hang on … the online route is the lawyers route? What is meant by back-end legislation? What would that have enabled? What is perplexing to me is that the online route for lawyers was negotiated by the Ordem dos Advogados and widely touted by lawyers as a more efficient (and so shorter) application process. If it has turned out to actually be a dead end why isn’t the organised legal profession up in arms? Because in this case promises were made to the OdA, on the basis of which lawyers made (incorrect and misleading) promises to their clients.
hold on.. hold on… When citing online I was trying to refer to counting of residency from the application, as some people referred it as online (application) I used that shortcut which might have misled you.. I am not referring to the actual online system in place.
This is also known as expression of interest and file-lock. See my entry prior to the one you replied.