A Portuguese friend sent me this recently if it is any use:
“There’s already talks about a carve out of GV investors from the base law. My learnings from the past is that law in Portugal is like a pendulum, first goes to far one side, then super hard on the other side and slowly gets to a more fair and sustainable path. It’s stupid and takes time, but I truly believe they’ll have to carve out the GV investors from the immigrant base law and both are completely different situations.”
I personally think it’s completely unreasonable and unfair to only except GV applicants. All people who applied before the new law took effect should be included.
What’s reasonable and fair and what’s realistic don’t always align. I’ll believe the GV carve out when I see it, but right now there are massive legal actions being prepared against the Portuguese state, one of which focuses on international investment protections. I think everyone who applied for any residency card before the new law should be grandfathered into the old one, but the ARI and some of the D programs have the best legal arguments in favor of special treatment. Grandfathering them would head off the most damaging court cases.
I agree. The context of my discussion was GV investors though, so his response was only really about them..
Is this just a personal opinion from your friend? Any reason we should give any weight to this? As much as I would love to give that view any credence it just sounds like speculation
Please don’t take it too seriously. It’s just an opinion, but one I hold high when it comes to Portugal. But as we have seen even lawyers have been wrong on the recent changes, so we won’t know anything for sure until we have reached a final conclusion.
Today (5-June)… long after the new Nationality Law took effect… I finally received a response to my 14-April letter to the President. It’s just a regurgitation of what he wrote when he promulgated the decree, and didn’t address any of my specific questions, like:
…either they just don’t get it, or they just don’t care.
His Excellency the President of the Republic has instructed me to thank you for your communication, which has been given the utmost attention by this Office of the President.
The President of the Republic’s decision to promulgate Assembly of the Republic Decree No. 48/XVII, amending the Nationality Law, was taken after careful consideration, bearing in mind that the new legislation aims to address the unconstitutionalities declared by the Constitutional Court in Judgment No. 1133/2025, in the context of a preventive review of a previous version of the text.
Nevertheless, the President of the Republic made a point of publicly emphasising that the revision of a law of such significance as the Nationality Law should be based on a broader parliamentary and social consensus, moving away from short-term ideological considerations and ensuring lasting legal stability.
The decision to promulgate the law was also influenced by the view that the new criteria and time limits do not hinder the necessary humanitarian protection or the integration of children and minors born in Portugal to immigrant parents.
The President of the Republic also highlighted the need to ensure that pending cases are not adversely affected by the legislative amendment, and that the calculation of the legally established time limits for obtaining nationality is not affected by the slowness of State services.
Confident that your concerns have been duly taken into account, I send my best regards.
The Chief of Staff, Cláudia Ribeiro
Received the same reply. I wonder how many they sent?
Got the reply a week or so ago. I plan to reply back saying that the end result of what he approved is deeply disappointing - with examples of what it has meant for me and my family. Don’t think anyone is really going to care but is not much of an effort from my side as well.
Got below message from my lawyer. Please have a look and take appropriate action (if interested).
Petition for the Adoption of a Transitional Regime for the Nationality Law.docx (14.3 KB)
There were similar petitions while the law was being drafted and PSD + Chega ignored them. Since the government in power hasn’t changed, they will ignore this one too.
In case you had any doubts how much the current Government dislikes you…
ADN apparently is a COVID-denying, climate-change-denying, Evangelical, nationalist party with… zero MPs, zero elected representatives at all at the national or European level? Maybe I’ve got my facts wrong but they sound maybe just a bit fringe. Hard to imagine this petition has much real support in its current form - but as foreshadowing, ugh.
So much chaos and confusion in Portugal over Nationality and foreigner’s law. Where they sleeping all this while? why, all of a sudden, the parliaments or people are talking so much about foreigners/residents and how bad they don’t want them? They started all this ARI and now, they are backing out after all the funds GV have generated and still generating. Really surprising. If they continue to push this agenda of delaying and even stopping people from residence and citizenship which they worked for and deserved, this might turn out to be a scam that can be easily challenged in the court.
Investment exiting Portugal is the only way to clearly “explain” consequences to politicians.
Pedro Lino, chief executive of Optimize Investment Partners, which manages one of Portugal’s leading golden visa funds, said about 40 investors, mostly from the U.S. and Asia, had withdrawn their money since the start of the year due to the changes. That adds up to about €20 million ($23.1 million), and lawyers say thousands more investors are preparing legal action against the state.
“It’s a significant change that caused investor interest to cool off and triggered some redemptions,” Lino said in an interview with Bloomberg News after returning to Lisbon from a visit to the U.S., where he was promoting the program. “It’s a blow to Portugal’s reputation.”
“We continue to attract investment, but it’s less than last year and a few investors have decided to exit the program.”
Many have money stuck not anticipating radical changes like this. There will be a gradual exodus over the next few years as funds unlock.
Main applicant loaded application back in March in AIMA only for the payment to be in “loading status” since. Which means dependent has been in limbo as well. So we are in a no-mans land while all of this has been going on. We have no real dates as far as AIMA is concerned. We aren’t really applied (at least dependent isn’t) and I don’t know about main applicant since the payment hasn’t hit in AIMA even though it was paid months ago. Attorneys just say “we have no updates” and “status is unchanged”. The frustration level was high but now we are just assuming it will never happen.
You applied in 2026? Can’t say we didn’t warn you…
We were getting together our information over the months prior and it just happened that our application and investor paperwork came together then. Sure, there were signs things would go awry. But we didn’t expect the systems to be down for months and our payment not even be processed 