There are two separate publications: the Diário da Assembleia da República, which is Parliament’s internal gazette, and the Diário da República.
A bill is published in the Diário da Assembleia da República once the text has been finalised, and MPs then have 3 days to raise any further issues with the text. Once it’s been promulgated by the President it’s published in the Diário da República as law.
Thanks for preparing this. I’m trying to get a clearer timeline from my lawyer, but I haven’t received a response yet.
This may ruffle some feathers and I really don’t want to generalize, but in the five years that I’ve been involved with Portuguese immigration (initially D7, now ARI), I’ve consistently found that Portuguese lawyers are not very creative thinkers/problem solvers. There’s a certain resignation to bureaucracy that seems very ingrained in the culture that is very foreign to me. On several occasions, my well-compensated team of attorneys have told me that I had to do something in a way that was either expensive or bureaucratic (usually both) to which I would respond by suggesting a more affordable/reasonable approach and to my frustration, their response was usually “Oh, sure! You can do it that way.” Like, “why wasn’t this your original suggestion?” I would think to myself. I’m very appreciative to my lawyers for a number of things, but I no longer expect them to ever think outside-the-box for me, which is a bummer because the best lawyers are good at finding shortcuts/loopholes.
Of course, if it goes to TC and TC comes back with issues, then there’s a whole new round of committee stage, plenary vote, finalisation, 3 day comment period, send to President etc. I may be wrong, but given Xmas, this should put the effective date of a revised law well into January.
I would settle for April, or even September, to avoid rushing things and making careless mistakes!
I think what you’re describing is a factor of the differences between civil law (most of Europe) and common law (most of the anglosphere) education and practice. This is a bit of a generalization, but civil law lawyers are trained to be logical, precise, systematic in applying statutes, ie interpret and apply established legal norms accurately. Common law lawyers are trained to be adversarial, and the system rewards innovation ie. identify areas of ambiguity in the law that you can exploit on behalf of clients. My lawyers in Lisbon are great, but when you come at these problems with experience in a common law jurisdiction, you notice the difference.
A lot of us suspected it was. There were various hints dropped over the course of time, and of course there were the straight-up results that we could all see, just that no one came right out and said it.
Yeah, we all sort of knew, but there’s always the chance you were wrong, that it was something in the way the offices worked, these cases involved some special step that mostly someone didnt know how to do, maybe it was the unofficial holdup caused by a few unhappy people who happened to be the critical path, etc. But, no, it was the policy coming from the top the whole time.
I think it’s a matter of principle that some legal action is done about this at this point. Especially now that they’re scheduling primary applicants without dependents, do they think GV investors have money that grows on trees and can just reschedule their lives and buy double or triple the plane tickets to take their families in and out of Portugal?
It’s a complete scam, this whole program is a government sponsored scam. It’s quite shocking, I want to go to the EU court with this or some other body. Forget Citizenship and nationality laws for a moment, even the bare minimum of delivering the thing you sold investors they failed to do, and have given absolutely no recourse. It’s a complete scam and they need to answer for it in court.
And it can’t be a Portuguese court, it needs to be some higher court or EU court, this needs to become an international scandal so that no future investors get trapped in this scam.
Not only do they make investors wait for 4 years, then they make them take 4 separate plane tickets for all 4 of their dependents.
There’s a topic on this forum, is the Portuguese Golden Visa a scam?
The answer is yes. Tell everyone you know, spread the word as much as you can, since the courts wont hear it, the public must.
It’s hard not to feel like this situation is a mix of uncertainty and what almost feels like a scam. They’ve suddenly started issuing a flood of biometric appointments. Both to people who have been waiting over two years and to those who applied only a few months ago and we still have no clarity on how this new law will actually work.
If the timeline truly starts ten years from receiving the first card, when will that first card even be issued after biometrics? How often will it need to be renewed during those ten years ? every two, three, or five years? What will the renewal costs look like?
And what about the physical presence requirement? Is it still seven days per year or fourteen days every two years? Will that rule change again in the next round of updates?
Then there’s the investment: does it need to be held for ten years or possibly even longer if policies shift again?
Right now, it seems nobody has reliable answers, not even the policymakers. Until there is real clarity,which I am doubtful, I’m not comfortable committing. There’s simply too much uncertainty, and the process is starting to resemble a scam rather than a structured policy.
pure scam, nothing less
Indeed…
1-March, 2025
7-May, 2025
8-May, 2025
13-October, 2025
I applied for GV in 2014. That means I’ve been through the corruption scandal that suspended the GV in 2015, multiple law changes, multiple platform changes, the change from SEF to AIMA, biometrics/renewals at 4 different SEF/AIMA offices, each with different rules and practices. SEF/AIMA lost nearly 4 years (even while they took my biometrics and ever-increasing renewal fees during that time). It was impossible to get answers, so I sucked it up and did more time.
Along the way I’ve seen how completely arbitrary law-making is here. There is no policy-thinking informing it and no engagement with state capacity. Ironically, this was most obvious in the more “positive” reforms a few years ago, which have overwhelmed IRN’s capacity and had so many unintended consequences (including, arguably, this backlash). The one constant (especially living in Portugal for the past 5 years) has been the visceral dislike for people perceived as “rich” and especially those on the GV. So I’m not surprised at what’s been said in Parliament - and the fact it was said out loud just speaks to the depth of popular and bureaucratic antipathy.
It’s truly admirable that you were able to stay so long. Just as I understand it, many early investors left very disappointed.
We know a number of early investors who got badly burned both on the immigration and property side. In our case, we only realized that we’d “lost” those years just before moving permanently to Portugal, which was just before Covid. Now we’re going through the equally dysfunctional citizenship process. The biggest implication has been kids aging out and all of those implications. Nothing is straightforward.
Same here — I applied back in 2015, and it’s been a total nightmare ever since.
With kids aging out, have you been able to find a solution? I am in a similar boat - just applied for citizenship but with a daughter who is currently 17years and only in possession of a residency card this year after a 5-year delay, it’s going to be tricky.
This is the real problem. It isn’t ok to be rich. I’ve written about this before, at least in passing, but it’s worth mentioning again because it’s really relevant to all of what is happening. But I cringe every time I pulled out my residence card that said ARI on it, and am glad that at least now it got flipped to a D2 so it doesn’t look as bad.
I’d say this is a product of Portuguese history. Until fairly recently, there was a massive divide between the landed elites and the common person. Yes, that used to be true lots of places elsewhere in Europe, but Portugal was bad. The fall of the Holy Roman Empire meant nothing this far out on the Iberian peninsula because it was never part of it. The sole long term impact of the French Revolution was the lines of Torres Vedras getting built to defend against Napoleon. The British often treated Portugal like a colony. The “republican revolution” just turned the nobility into landed gentry without changing the system or its basic premises. Then the Estado Novo froze the entire country in a paternalistic bubble for most of the 20th century and so they missed the entire post-war boom and the Pax Americana. Let’s not forget that Salazar was the sort of person who thought that education beyond the 3 Rs was wasted on the common man, and news of the outside world was bad for you if not filtered appropriately.
In other words, the only rich people around were the folks oppressing the masses. Until recently - and 50 years counts as recent - hard work never got you anything but more hard work - you got rich through who you knew or who you buttered up or taking advantage of others or just outright corruption. And it’s still true to fair extent - look at the continual corruption scandals, both in and out of government.
They never had a Rockefeller or Carnegie or Gates who, while being rich bastards, still at least built libraries and universities and at least tried to do something towards the common good.
The capitalism they’re experiencing and learning from is the modern version of it which to many I imagine is starting to look like crony capitalism; there isn’t the history running around in their heads like we have of what it could or should be, and the basic mindset of the country runs socialist - except for Chega, which may as well be channeling aspects of Salazar.
It’s only been 50 years. Cultures and memories do not change overnight.
There’s a lot more I can say here, but I can’t go on forever. The point is, they’re just not coming at it from the same backdrop we are, and it’s a real problem to which it’s unclear that there is any great solution.
(I don’t claim to be an expert here. I have a lot of history books to read yet. This is just what I’ve gotten from the couple I’ve read. And I know I’m grossly oversimplifying since this isn’t exactly a topic I’ve done heavy research into, I just agree it’s there.)
It’s so frustrating.
I assume the years she waited were counted, so she’s done the time but won’t turn 18 (for a 6.1 application) before the law changes?
There’s Art 2, which will kick in as soon as you get citizenship. Some challenges with this route:
One good thing is that once you have citizenship your daughter can reunify to you (an EU citizen) until 21 or after for as long as she’s dependent. This means she can apply for 5 year temporary residence under Art 15 and has a range of EU level protections.
Finally, once she turns 18 she can apply for permanent residence. That would insulate her from whatever madness the PT might unleash over the next years and keep her on the citizenship track.
I’m sure you know all of this already. Let me know if you have any other ideas.
The original law was Diário da República, 1.ª série — N.º 154 — 9 de agosto de 2012 . 0419104256.pdf
According to my research, (unverified) the general debate and voting on the general principles took place on July 5, 2012, during the 70th plenary session of the Assembly of the Republic (published in the Diário da Assembleia da República, I Série, n.º 71). The final vote, article by article, occurred later, leading to the law’s promulgation on August 9 and entry into force on October 8, 2012.
There are almost certainly debates on this topic from 2012 in DAR, but I can’t find them. Debates Parlamentares - Assembleia da República / 3ª República