Portugal: Government proposes new nationality law after mass applications

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Portugal: Government proposes new nationality law after mass applications

8:15 CAT | 26 Jun 2025

File photo: Lusa

The proposal to amend the nationality law, which the government submitted to parliament on Wednesday, will take effect on 19 June to deal with the mass applications submitted after the legislative elections.

In the bill submitted today, to which Lusa had access, “it is generally proposed that the new nationality regime should only apply in the future, with one important exception: naturalisation procedures pending on the date of the future publication of the law, but which were initiated after 19 June 2025, the date on which the Programme of the 25th Constitutional Government was made possible”.

According to the text of the bill, the government considers that, “since the election period, it has been known that the winning coalition intended to impose greater requirements on the Portuguese nationality regime, to ensure that it always has an effective and genuine connection to the national community”.

At the time, “it was clear to everyone – citizens and immigrants alike, that, among other significant changes, the temporal and material requirements for naturalisation would be made more stringent and increased in number”. so that, after the government’s programme was passed by parliament, “there was a massive wave of applications for naturalisation”, according to the draft law.

These applications, according to the government, “constitute rather a last-minute attempt to benefit from the highly permissive requirements of the outgoing legal regime,” which provided for five years of residence in Portugal to qualify for citizenship.

The new law provides for a minimum period of seven years of regular residence for citizens of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) and ten years for others, imposing much stricter rules.

“This abusive and belated recourse” is prevented by the law, which takes as its basis the “feasibility of the government’s programme”.

The programme, according to the proposal, is “an eminently political document, widely publicised and to which the Constitution attaches important legal consequences, starting with the government’s entry into full office”.

Source: Lusa