Discussion and voting just ended. Well after many delays and proposals, sadly it’s back to the very first version. None of the proposals aiming to mitigate and protect were approved. All rejected.
From a lawyer in the WhatsApp group.
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Well, the game is not over, as the law still needs to pass the President approval and possibly the Constitutional Court.
And counter-intuitively, not having any protection/grandfathering increases the chance of the President NOT approving straight away.
So I view this ‘blunt’ version passing on as positive news in fact.
The PS’s amendments became so diluted and useless in the end that it was better to drop them altogether..
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I certainly hope so..
Not surprised by any of this. So like I said a week ago…
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Is it over? I thought this has to pass on Tuesday with a majority. Chega could still be like “Nah, this isn’t good enough” and block it. In which case, this followed by a state budget upheaval could mean new elections with Chega gaining even more power.
Seems like it could go either way at this point. Since the proposal hasn’t been watered down PS is clearly not going to vote for it.
I suppose it remains to be seen which (if any) amendments make it through on Tuesday, if Chega withdraws support, if the President sends it to the constitutional court, etc.
Doesn’t seem like game over yet.
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This is consistent with my take and the opinion of a few lawyers I’ve spoken with over the past few months. There are major issues with the law as written that mirror those in the foreigners’ law that the tribunal constitucional took issue with.
The consensus seems to be that changing the timeline to citizenship, the language requirement and implementing a citizenship test are entirely the prerogative of the legislature. however, the devil is in the details. any provisions that create multiple classes of citizen with different rights are going to be problematic - this is primarily the threat of loss of citizenship for naturalized citizens but could arguably extend to differential timelines to citizenship for CPLP/EU vs everyone else, depending upon the perspective of the court and whether they think this falls under equal protection laws and whether those laws extend to residents as well as citizens.
Another major issue is that AIMA’s dysfunction and inability to follow the law makes the contagem de tempo provisions capricious and arbitrary - that is the law says AIMA has 90 days to decide on an application but they are taking 2-4 years+ without any rhyme or reason. If they think the legal backlog is bad now, just wait until every single applicant starts filing a lawsuit right at 90 days because otherwise who knows when the clock will actually start. I suspect there will be a compromise here.
The retroactive provisions are clearly problematic and have been discussed to death.
Finally, the lack of a clear transition plan will probably also be an issue. Everyone currently in process has an argument that they applied with a legitimate expectation of a residency permit within 90 days and citizenship eligibility in 5 years. Lawyers seems split on this issue but all do seem to agree that the lack of any transition plan at all is likely to be an issue for the president and TC.
I share your opinion that the passage of such a blunt law might be better than a watered down but still bad law. I think there’s a high likelihood that we see a repeat of what happened with the foreigners’ law over the summer.
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They voted on it with original version? Surely this is going to be struck down by constitutional court. My guess is CHEGA is going to use this as ammunition going into the election (after budget fails to pass) saying ‘look this government is so weak on immigration they couldnt even make citizenship harder for those nasty immigrants’ etc etc. Basically blame the government, and take more votes from the people who blame them for all of portugal’s troubles.
That’s my take anyway.
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It’s scheduled for Monday and is essentially the original bill with no revisions. This sure seems like political theater.
If the bill goes through as originally written, It seems clear that it will exist as a messaging bill. These people aren’t stupid, and putting together a major piece of legislation with several clearly unconstitutional provisions (just a couple of months after having another major piece of legislation overturned) seems designed to fail. It seems pretty similar to what PS did when they tried to retroactively cancel the ARI program. Everyone can say that they acted one the country’s more populist instincts, but were held back by constitutional concerns. If this were really designed to survive constitutional review they’d be doing it differently.
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The problem with political theatre is that for those in the audience, it’s dead serious.
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No disagreement, but unfortunately we are only one of the pieces in the puzzle, and the ones with the least direct influence to boot.
Exactly.
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From the article in the last post:
The parliamentary leader of the Socialist Party (PS) highlighted as a “central point” of disagreement on the part of his party the repeal of the rule in the law in force that safeguards “the time elapsed since the moment the residence permit was requested” in Portugal “for the purposes of counting deadlines”.
The PS presented an “intermediate proposal” so that “citizens could count the time from the moment the State, the Public Administration, fails to meet the response deadline”, but it was rejected.
“For us, this is a serious breach in the relationship between the Public Administration and its citizens, in this case, with foreign citizens, but if we apply this paradigm to other spheres, it will have a serious impact on the relationship between the Public Administration and its citizens,” argued Eurico Brilhante Dias.
Here, here. Let us hope the Constitutional Court agrees.
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@sj-to-pt If the full “rug pull” does indeed go ahead, and as you (like us) are residing in Portugal, what will you do? The thought of paying another €50,000 in fees vs. packing up and moving on are both quite unpalatable. But, and there’s always a but, those very well may end up being our two choices. 
@lifedreamer Can you provide any positive spin on this situation, and likely next steps by parliament?
What do you expect to pay €50k in fees for?
AIMA’s renewal fees, legal fees and apostilled documents, total close to €5000 per person. And there are 3 of us. Depending on how many extra rounds of renewals (3-4) we would need to complete for the 10 year residency requirements, this could fall somewhere between €45-60,000.
Or am I miscalculating? I’d be delighted to be wrong. 
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you could just get permanent residence, that is 5 years non? so you might only need to do the first residence once.
Ah, sure, over 10 years that makes sense.
PS lost the 2024 election by only two seats. They insisted on transparency and demanded an investigation into the Spinumviva scandal; PSD rejected a 90-day inquiry and deliberately forced a failed vote of confidence, triggering this early 2025 election.
Unfortunately, PS again fell behind Chega by two seats. As the third-largest party, they will have fewer votes on certain committees.
And after PSD got a taste of the success of those sophisticated political maneuvers, they are trying to win over Chega voters by outbidding their proposals (Chega mentioned 6–10 years without revoking Article 15(4), which means a family only needs to spend 1 extra year and the price of, e.g., a CPLP CBI).
We’re screwed by razor-thin margins and an unfortunate series of dominoes.
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