CPLP visas in force until June 30, 2024, warns AIMA

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CPLP visas in force until June 30, 2024, warns AIMA

9:02 CAT | 05 Apr 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

Portugal’s Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) announced on the 13-03 that all CPLP (Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries) visas are valid only until June 30 of this year.

At issue is the fact that the one-year CPLP residence permits, first issued in March, 2023, as part of the mobility agreement signed by Portugal, are not being renewed by AIMA, according to a report brought on the same day by Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias.

In response, AIMA states that these authorizations “continue to be accepted by all Portuguese public authorities, for all legal purposes, until June 30, 2024”, within the framework of the decree-law that regulates the “Exceptional and temporary measures relating to the epidemiological situation of the new Coronavirus (COVID 19)”, the first version of which dates back to March 2020.

“Documents and visas relating to stay in national territory, whose validity expires from the date of entry into force of this decree-law or in the 15 days immediately preceding, are accepted, under the same terms, until June 30, 2024,” the most recent update of the diploma indicates.

According to AIMA, “this rule applies to all residence permits that expired after February 22, 2020”, while pointing out that “CPLP residence permits were only created in 2023, therefore it applies to all those issued”.

“Users with expiring residence permits are being informed of the extension of the validity period by email,” said AIMA.

Several government officials, in previous statements to Lusa, had promised a solution for renewing these visas, but at the time AIMA was not responding to requests made.

After the CPLP Mobility Agreement entered into force in Portugal, the European Commission opened infringement proceedings against Portugal saying that “the CPLP Mobility Agreement provides for a residence permit that does not conform to the uniform model established” for the EU.

In response, Portugal insisted that there was no non-compliance, and that the measure falls within the CPLP mobility agreement and is not a residence permit with effect in the Schengen area (of free movement of people and goods), since holders of the authorization cannot cross the borders of Portugal.

The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) was created on July 17, 1996, at the Lisbon Constitutive Summit. It comprises Brazil, Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe, and Timor-Leste.

Source: Lusa