Do you have a source for this convention?
I wonder if the fact he’s only got about 2 “working months” worth of time left in the position will affect things… either to try “resolve Nationality” before he goes, or feel he should leave it to the next President who has to preside over the outcome.
(yes, I know the President has time limits to decide things)
The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, announced this Thursday that he has called for presidential elections to be held on January 18, 2026.
this is not from today, but helpful to understand some of the dynamics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxQwRHA9980
I did a search for this. This source states that
The main law regulating the obtaining of the EU passport, as well as establishing obligations and rights arising from the status, is the European Convention of 6.11.1997. According to Article 6, the period of naturalization (acquisition of citizenship of a foreign state on the basis of residence on its territory) cannot exceed 10 years, but in fact this period can be significantly increased due to the workload of migration services and other factors.
So if that´s true, Portugal can´t actually push the residence requirement past 10 years, although they can obviously delay processing applications and similar administrative stunts.
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The new law will require ten years of continuous residence in the last ten (or seven out of ten for CPLP/EU). If you miss a day, you are ineligible. If AIMA slow-walks your renewal until a week after your card expires, what then? They aren’t going to continue issuing these automatic extension decrees indefinitely.
Do you think that the government is going to do the right thing? Indemnify you for their failure to perform? What does their track record show so far?
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I think the sheer disrespect that has been shown to us from the government in the past few days, after all the delays and challenges, after all the patient waiting and following the law, after all the spending of hundreds of euros resubmitting document after document because they kept asking for updated copies, the sheer disrespect has shaken me from my apathy.
I cannot believe that a country could tarnish its reputation so badly, but every single person I speak to in my network who already had a negative opinion about doing business in Portugal is only going to have that opinion sent all the way down.
At first I was, for four full years willing to believe that they were just struggling, perhaps there were some logistical challenges, perhaps there was just pure incompetence and nothing more.
I’m sorry to say, I can’t say that anymore. After the disrespect shown to investors who took their hard earned money and invested it in a country, who moved their lives, who developed plans for further investment and shared love and tales of joy about Portugal with their friends and family, I can no longer say it’s just incompetence at work here.
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Take heed what lifedreamer is saying. Your investments are not safe. Candidly, I am not sure you are safe. When adherence to the rule of law is no longer important, I am not sure that your personal safety is assured. History tends to repeat itself. Do you hear any reassuring words from the EU? No. I have read exactly one article expressing outrage over calling for all those without Portuguese blood to leave. This should tell you all you need to know
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In fact, after living here for over a year, with our child attending a local private Portuguese school, and interacting with many government institutions, companies, and local residents, we’ve come to deeply appreciate that “saying one thing and doing another” is a widespread phenomenon in this country. Therefore, it’s not surprising what’s happening in politics now; the root cause lies in this kind of culture.
At this point, it feels that the Portuguese government will drag out the new law for months. Meanwhile, AIMA will rush through biometric appointments so they can say they’re making progress. And then, instead of real change, we’ll probably see a mild tweak to the citizenship rules ,just enough to keep the system attractive from the outside, but nowhere near enough to fix the bottlenecks or restore trust. After that, I’m bracing for the usual pattern to repeat, delays, vague timelines, and promises that quietly fade away. I hope I’m wrong, but looking at this historically, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
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The source is the European Convention on Nationality (ETS No. 166)
Paragraph 3 of Article 6 under Chapter III:
Each State Party shall provide in its internal law for the possibility of naturalisation of persons lawfully and habitually resident on its territory. In establishing the conditions for naturalisation, it shall not provide for a period of residence exceeding ten years before the lodging of an application.
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While, Portugal is a member of the Council of Europe, the list of ratifications for ETS No. 166 does not include Portugal as a State Party.
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You can check the data which is current as of today on the Council of Europe website: https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list?module=signatures-by-treaty&treatynum=166
Portugal not only ratified it, they were also among the early adopters for this convention.
They signed it 06/11/1997, ratified it on 15/10/2001 with no reservations or derogation and effectively amended their internal laws into compliance on 01/02/2002.
So when CH and PSD were both pursuing 10 years this was not a coincidence, it is actually the legal maximum under international obligations.
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Published in DN about 45 mins. ago.
If you have not written to the President yet, please do so now! This TC review is pretty much our last hope (before lawsuits which may/may not succeed).
The law, approved this week, will now be sent to the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. The head of state can veto it politically, sanction it or request a preventive review of its constitutionality by the Constitutional Court (TC), as he did in the case of the Foreigners Law.
So far, there is no indication that he will do so. The Government chose to “slice” the law so that the amendment susceptible to constitutional doubts would remain in a separate bill. Thus, the rest of the bill — including the change in the minimum length of residence to apply for nationality and the revocation of the Sephardic route — remained unchanged.
If the legislation is enacted, it will be published in the Official Gazette and will come into force the following day.
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I hand-wrote a warm, personal letter on stationery and delivered it to the presidential palace. The presidential staff regarded it as a charming treat, logged my personal details, and received it with gravitas. They also ensured that I had provided my return correspondence address on the outer envelope.
My letter doesn’t go into anything about privileging one group of residents over another. I don’t think any party in Portugal, especially in the current social climate, is going to receive that argument with gratitude. It makes a simple argument about the importance of legal certainty and the protection of legitimate expectations as the basis for a safe, healthy, stable, just society. If we can’t trust promises made in the past, we can’t trust promises made today.
From prior activism experience, I believe that handwritten letters, and especially hand-delivered messages, are weighted more strongly, and read with more care, than email / form letters. But don’t get carried away; they don’t have time to read a novelette.
I may meander around Belem and try to find Marcelo out for ice cream and selfies. He’s a man of the people, unlike the politicians of my home country. I’d love to give my heart-to-heart perspective to that kind man, and hope that it reinforce his personal satisfaction in choosing to do the right thing for humanity by referring this unjust law to the TC.
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That passage from the DN article looks harrowing. I think the “slice” they are referring to is the part of the law that involved revoking citizenship. This was removed from the bill to be debated at a later date. That was clearly the most extreme part of the law, but it seems like there might be constitutional issues with other parts as well, even if less extreme.
I agree in any case - please write the president if you haven’t already - as well as the PS party, who have enough votes to send it separately - asking them to send the bill to the CC for review.
Interesting opinion piece here:
This statement concerned me – perhaps someone has an interpretation?
“In the end, the President of the Republic did not wish to speak to journalists and only mentioned that the new version of the Nationality Law has not yet reached the Palace of Belém, and a meeting is scheduled “in parliament, on November 6,” where the final wording is expected to be fixed.”
Once they have “fixed” the final wording, is there still the possibility of sending it to the CC? My lawyers have also scheduled a presentation on the Nationality Law for 6th November – coincidence?
This is normal. Once the vote has passed in plenary, the text goes back to Committee to be finalised. Basically parliamentary lawyers check it for typos, consistency, etc. The Committee has a meeting scheduled for 5th November (not 6th) to do that. After that it is published in the Parliamentary gazette, and MPs have three working days to raise any issues. Only then does it go to the President, and he has 8 days to refer it to the TC. Or 20 days to exercise a political veto.
So the President should get the text around 12 November, and can refer it to the TC up to around 20 November.
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There’s some bleak humour in voting on a consequential reform … and THEN asking lawyers to check the wording.
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In all likelihood the members of the parliament didn’t think too much about the impact of the new law on Golden Visa investors, as our numbers are very small compared to the supposedly millions of aliens who are trying to obtain a legal status in Portugal.
To me the most obvious solution is to offer GV investors a 5-year path to citizenship regardless of what the rule is for everyone else. Many GV countries offer fast track to citizenship for investors in order to attract capital to the country. Why can’t Portugal do the same?
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Suddenly every single company in the GV space, and the government as well will suddenly pivot to the following line:
“The GV program was never truly a path to citizenship. It only offered the possibility of citizenship. Therefore the GV program remains unchanged and an attractive option for all of our investors. These changes to the law don’t affect the GV program at all. We encourage applicants to apply as soon as possible.”
The entire GV community will get swept up in collective amnesia and pretend as if this was the case all along.
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