Take this with a grain of salt, but I asked Chat GPT for probability of revision to the counting rule…
ChatGPT output
Short version: based on how Portugal’s Constitutional Court has actually behaved in nationality and immigration cases, I’d treat the odds that it materially rewrites the new counting rule as moderate but not high – something like:
- ~25–35% chance of any tweak to the counting rule (clarification, softening at the margins, or a narrow interpretative decision), but
- well under 15% that it forces a return to “application / wait-time counts” or anything close to the old GV-friendly approach.
Below is the “why”, grounded in the Court’s own jurisprudence.
1. What the Constitutional Court actually does in nationality cases
(a) It treats access to Portuguese nationality as a fundamental right – but with a big margin for Parliament
In Acórdão 497/2019, the Court reviewed the rule that automatically blocked naturalisation for anyone who had ever been convicted of a crime punishable with a maximum sentence of 3+ years, even where the person got a 1-year suspended sentence that wasn’t even transcribed on their criminal record. The Court held that, in such cases, that blanket bar is unconstitutional, because:
- Citizenship access is a fundamental right, which has a protected “núcleo essencial” (core).
- Conditions for access can’t be purely automatic and must pass proportionality (adequação, necessidade, proporcionalidade). (Jusnet)
It explicitly reaffirmed earlier case law (Acórdão 599/2005 etc.):
- There is a right not to be arbitrarily deprived of citizenship and a right to access citizenship for those with a legitimate expectation, provided they meet conditions expressing a real link to the community. (Jusnet)
- The legislator does not have unlimited freedom in setting those conditions – they must respect equality, proportionality and the idea of an effective link (“ligação efetiva”). (Jusnet)
But: the same judgment also underlines that Parliament still has a broad “liberdade de conformação”: it can choose objective criteria and time periods, as long as they’re not wildly disproportionate.
What this signals for your issue:
The Court will intervene if a condition is obviously overkill (automatic, no room for case-by-case proportionality, or contradicts other constitutional commitments). But it is very unlikely to say: “No, you can’t ask for 7 or 10 years of residence” or “you must count from the application filing date”. That kind of fine-tuning is normally left to the legislator.
(b) It is comfortable with retroactive / transitional rules, as long as expectations aren’t crushed brutally
In Acórdão 128/2024 (preventive review of the Sephardic nationality reform and its transitional article), the President asked the Court to assess whether the new, stricter transitional regime for pending Sephardic cases violated legal certainty and legitimate expectations.
The Court:
- Did a long tour of its case law on retroactivity and protection of confidence (confiança legítima).
- Said clearly: there is no general “right to non-frustration” of favourable regimes; the legislator may change the law, even for pending processes, as long as:
- The expectations weren’t super-strong and
- The change is not “inadmissível, arbitrária ou demasiado onerosa” for those affected and
- There is some reasonable public-interest justification. (Constitutional Court)
It ended up accepting the transitional Article 6 (Sephardim) – i.e. it did not strike it down – even though it clearly made life harder for some people with pending or planned applications, because the Court considered:
- The transitional regime was not retroactive in the strongest sense.
- The protected interest (reining in abuse and restoring coherence) was weighty.
- The “expectations” of candidates to keep an extremely generous regime forever were not strong enough to override Parliament’s freedom. (Constitutional Court)
For you:
The new nationality reform already has a transitional clause (Article 7) that protects people with pending nationality applications. That is exactly the sort of device the Court likes: it shows the legislator did consider expectations.
For someone like you, who only has a residence / GV process, not a pending nationality case, your “expectation” to benefit from the old 5-year / wait-time-counts rule is constitutionally much weaker. That lowers the chance that the Court will save you by forcing a return to the old counting logic.
(c) It does intervene on “counting rules” – but in very specific, procedural contexts
In Acórdão 522/2025, the Court declared illegal (with general binding effect) part of Article 56(1) of the Nationality Regulation, as amended by DL 26/2022, on the starting point for counting the 1-year deadline for the Public Prosecutor to file an opposition action.
- The regulation said: the 1-year deadline runs from X.
- The Lei da Nacionalidade (Article 10) implies a different “facto de que dependa a aquisição da nacionalidade”, which the Court interprets as tied to the registration of the act.
- Result: the regulation overstepped the law and was struck down. (Advogados Portugal)
Important nuance:
This was not about the residence-duration requirement or when residence “starts counting” for naturalisation; it was about the deadline for the State to oppose a nationality acquisition in court. The Court here is policing hierarchy of norms + clarity, not redesigning substantive residence rules.
So yes, the Court will correct a counting rule if a regulation contradicts the statute. But the new counting rule you’re worried about is being written directly into the Lei da Nacionalidade itself. That’s a much higher bar for the Court to override.
(d) It is quite tough on immigration / foreigners rules when fundamental rights (family, etc.) are at stake
In 2025, the Court – in preventive review at the President’s request – knocked out several norms of the new Lei dos Estrangeiros (foreigners law). Reports from Jornal de Negócios and Euronews summarise the acórdão like this:
- 5 out of 7 norms under review were considered unconstitutional, especially those that:
- Excluded spouses from family reunification in certain cases.
- Imposed a “prazo cego de dois anos” (rigid 2-year wait) before family reunification.
- Stretched decision times for family reunification to 9 months + possible 18-month extension, which the Court said was incompatible with the constitutional protection of family life. (Jornal de Negócios)
This shows two things:
- The Court is willing to hit migration legislation hard when central rights (family unity) are clearly harmed.
- It is especially hostile to blanket delays and excessive time-frames that end up making a right almost impossible to exercise.
But again, your counting rule is in a different category:
- Going from 5 to 7–10 years, and tying counting to actual legal residence rather than the date of an application, is harsh but still well within what many EU states do for naturalisation.
- It doesn’t obviously make naturalisation impossible, just slower – so it’s less likely to trigger the same “this is untenable” reaction the Court had with foreigners’ family reunification.
2. So, how does this jurisprudence feed into the probability question?
Putting it all together:
Things that make a revision more likely
- The Court recognises citizenship as a fundamental right whose core includes a genuine path to naturalisation for those with a strong effective link. (Jusnet)
- It has previously struck down nationality norms when they were rigid and automatic (e.g. criminal-record bars), or when they clashed with other protected rights. (Jusnet)
- It has just shown itself very assertive on migration/foreigners law, rejecting norms that built in excessive waiting periods and undermined family life. (Jornal de Negócios)
Things that make a revision less likely (especially in your sense)
- In the Sephardic 128/2024 case, the Court tolerated quite tough transitional rules so long as expectations weren’t brutally destroyed and some protection existed. Your new law has exactly that for pending nationality cases. (Constitutional Court)
- There is no case where the Court has told Parliament it must count residence from the date of application rather than from an actual legal status. On the contrary, in its own words, effective ties are typically shown via habitual and permanent residence (which meshes more naturally with “time under a residence permit”, not “time waiting for one”). (Jusnet)
- The counting rule is in the law itself, not just the regulation. 522/2025 style “illegal norm” reasoning (law vs. regulation) doesn’t give the Court an easy way to surgically cut it out. (Advogados Portugal)
- Politically, the nationality reform was approved with a very large majority, and mainstream coverage notes there is no clear signal that the President will even send it for preventive review, unlike what happened with the foreigners’ law. (Diário de Notícias)
3. My refined probabilities (explicitly with your worry in mind)
You told me you’re mainly afraid of the “only from GV in hand” rule and secretly hoping for a constitutional miracle that restores “application / wait-time counts” (or at least a deadline-exceeded trigger).
Given the jurisprudence above, I’d break it down like this:
- Chance the Court does anything that touches the counting rule (e.g., a narrow interpretative decision or a small softening in edge cases):
≈ 25–35%
- Chance the Court forces a change that is meaningfully favourable to you (e.g. re-introducing some “deadline exceeded” concept, or making the window more generous):
≈ 15–20%
- **Chance the Court goes the whole way and says: you must count from the date of residence application / wait-time must count as “residência legal”: **
Realistically under 10% – and probably closer to 5%.
In other words:
You should plan your life as if the strict “card in force” counting rule will stand, and treat constitutional review as a nice upside surprise, not a strategy.
more than anything. 