Welcome to the Week em Breve, a wrap-up of important Portuguese news to keep you up to date and in the know.
Immigrant employment platform to launch in Lisbon
In the next month, Câmara de Lisboa (Lisbon City Council) will launch a platform to connect the city’s immigrants with jobs and training opportunities that match their skills, SIC Notícias reports.
The new platform will build on the “Lisbon Employment Map” and was first proposed by Conselho de Cidadãos de Lisboa (Lisbon Citizens’ Council), an initiative to involve citizens in city decisions.
“We cannot continue with a situation where there is a lack of workers and, at the same time, immigrants without jobs. We are going to make this connection between skills and needs,” Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas said in a statement.
Highest Employment in Portugal since the ’90s
In December 2024, the unemployment rate in Portugal was just 6.4%, Publico reports. This is the highest level of employment since 1998 and a 1.4% increase compared to 2023.
The biggest jump in employment was among young people, the publication writes. There was also an increase in the working population, reaching 5.479 million people, the highest in 26 years.
Faster residency for employed immigrants
The Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) has launched an online platform to streamline immigrant regularization, EuroWeekly News reports.
Immigrant regularization is the process whereby immigrants already paying Social Security (Segurança Social) fees get legal residency.
Under the new system, applicants need to have been making Social Security contributions for one month, compared to 12 months under the old system. There is hope that this will help tackle the 400,000-case backlog in applications.
However, this new process is not open to the self-employed or those making individual Social Security contributions, the publication writes.
AIMA is making same mistakes as SEF, Migration Workers’ Union says
Portugal’s Immigration and Borders Service, SEF, was dismantled in 2023 following a series of severe failures.
Agência para a Integração Migrações e Asilo (AIMA) was created as a replacement but has maintained SEF staff in leadership positions.
The Migration Workers’ Union (STM – Sindicato dos Trabalhadores da Migração) said this will lead to the same mistakes, accusing the organization of “a climate of nepotism and despotism,” LUSA and The Portugal News report.
“Leaving these people in management positions without a public exam is a shot in the foot for the institution itself,” Manuela Niza, STM representative, told the publication.
Law to build housing on green land stumbles
The recently approved law allowing municipalities to rezone rural land for housing has come under scrutiny after the politician responsible was accused of a conflict of interest, Euractiv reports.
Hernâni Dias, the Secretary of State responsible for the new law, set up two real estate firms while working on the legislation, according to the publication.
Dias has since resigned and will be the subject of an inquiry over a potential conflict of interest.
In Portugal, “rural land” includes national reserves, forests, and farmland. Critics argue that the new law would create more houses for the wealthy at the expense of green areas rather than curbing the housing crisis, as it purports to do.
One in 10 Lisbon homes is vacant
Meanwhile, an Expresso investigation has found that 10% of homes in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto are empty.
Using data from the 2021 Census, Expresso also discovered that 136,000 empty homes are neither for sale nor rent. They sit empty for various reasons, including administrative issues, inheritance disputes, or disrepair, the paper reports.
Similar reports have come out in previous years, all with the same question: how can there be a housing crisis with so many empty homes?
