Welcome to the Week em Breve, a wrap-up of important Portuguese news to keep you up to date and in the know.
Immigration services to give preference to lawyers
Got a lawyer to help you with that residency appointment? Apparently, you’ll get preferential treatment if you do, according to Lusa.
The Portuguese Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados – OA) and the Agency of Migration, Integration, and Asylum (Agência para a Integração Migrações e Asilo – AIMA) have signed a new agreement allowing for not just preferential service but also a set time reserved for lawyers only.
The new “protocol” was the result of months of negotiations, prompted by lawyers complaining that they sometimes had to show up at AIMA offices at dawn, according to Lusa.
Stricter rules floated for golden visa holders
Buyers of Portuguese golden visas, meanwhile, may need to jump through more hoops to gain residency and citizenship if the center-right AD – PSD/CDS Coalition of the Social Democratic Party and the People’s Party, which is currently in power, prevails in this year’s snap elections, according to The Portugal News.
The group’s electoral campaign includes a proposal to extend the minimum period of residency and require more time to be spent in Portugal (currently, it’s just 14 days every two years).
120,000 residence permits issued without criminal record checks at country of origin
Meanwhile, Jornal de Notícias reports that from 2023 to 2024, more than 100,000 immigrants obtained residence permits without being properly vetted for criminal backgrounds.
AIMA’s precursor agency, the Foreigners and Borders Service (Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras- SEF), apparently issued over 120,000 permits to applicants from Portuguese-speaking countries through an automated process set up to speed up the work of the agency. That process allegedly covered background checks for crimes committed in Portugal and anything showing up with Europol or Interpol, but not crimes committed in the country of origin.
PSD is blaming the Socialist Party, under whose rule the scheme had gone into effect, according to Diário de Notícias. PSD vice-president Carlos Coelho also claimed that his party cleaned up the mess “with security and humanity” since taking control 11 months ago.
It’s unclear how many of the 120,000 applicants were found to have committed undisclosed crimes.
Half of foreigners aren’t registered with centros de saúde
Only about 882,000 foreigners are properly registered with Portugal’s National Health System (Serviço Nacional de Saúde – SNS), as indicated by the number of those registered with their local centros de saúde, according to data cited by Público.
That’s a little over half of the estimated 1.6 million foreigners currently residing in the country, although these figures may not paint the full picture of the use of healthcare services by foreigners, Público cautions.
Can football rescue the Lisbon-Madrid train line?
The prospect of co-hosting the FIFA World Cup may have Portugal and Spain a little more stimulated to reconnect their capitals by train.
Portugal’s capital hasn’t been connected to Spain’s capital by a direct train since 2020, and the one that existed before then took more than 10 hours (the journey takes 5 to 6 hours or so by car).
Different dates have been floated over the years for a new high-speed line going into operation, but one appears to be sticking: 2030, when Spain and Portugal will co-host the football championship.
The connection, which will take just three hours, is one of the “top priorities” for the European Commission, said Apostolos Tzitzikostas, EU Commissioner for Transport, according to euronews.com.
It’s unclear whether there will also be a high-speed train to Morocco, the third co-host for the 2030 cup.
Tribunais do Consumo: An underused dispute resolution resource for consumers
Consumers in Portugal who run into problems with businesses may not be properly using a network of “consumer courts” (Tribunais do Consumo) around the country set up for arbitration, Público reports.
In all, there are seven on the mainland — Ciab (Braga), Triave (Guimarães), Cicap (Porto), CACRC (Coimbra), CACCL (Lisbon), Cimaal (the Algarve), and CNIACC (Alentejo) — and two for the autonomous regions: CIMARA for the Azores and CACC-RAM for Madeira.
They get results: of the 9,216 cases initiated last year, 84% were resolved, with an average processing time of 57 days, CNIACC director Fernando Viana told Público, adding that the cases are resolved in favor of consumers “most of the time.”
