Welcome to the Week em Breve, a wrap-up of important Portuguese news to keep you up to date and in the know.
“Foreigners’ law” approved for submission following revisions
The Portuguese government has resubmitted its new so-called “foreigners’ law”to the President after the first version was rejected as “unconstitutional” by the Constitutional Court.
On Tuesday, the revised proposal was approved for submission by the government, led by the right-of-center coalition between the Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democrata – PSD) and the People’s Party (Partido Popularo – CDS-PP), thanks to votes from the far-right Chega party, with the entire left-of-center contingent in the National Assembly voting against it, according to Público.
The new proposal doesn’t include a clause initially demanded by Chega that foreigners be denied Social Security benefits during the first five years of residing in the country, Público wrote.
Chega leader Andre Ventura — who as of last month is running for President of Portugal in the election in 2026, after saying in March that he wouldn’t three days after he said that he would — had told reporters last Monday that the five-year requirement was something his party would not budge on.
“If you don’t agree, we have no agreement. Because for us this is a decisive point,” SIC Notícias quoted him as saying on Monday, in its headline.
By the next day, Chega withdrew that decisive point, according to Público.
The revamped proposal does include measures to exclude social benefits from calculations of sufficient means; reduced time, compared to the rejected version, for family reunification requests, but more time for the Agency for Integration, Migrations and Asylum (AIMA, Agência para a Integração Migrações e Asilo) to make decisions on such requests; more stringent rules on proving residency applicants have adequate housing, presumably to avoid the kind of crowded housing conditions that led to devastating deaths over the past few months; limiting work visas to highly qualified professionals; and other measures.
The law now awaits the decision of President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who can either sign it or veto it — as he did on the last version in August — and send it back to the Constitutional Court for another review.
Golden visa-ready investment fund launched just for Americans
Foreigners with a bit of spare change, meanwhile, could always bypass much of this immigration quagmire, thanks to Portugal’s real-estate- or investment-for-residency scheme known as the “golden visa.”
It’s not as simple as it was in the past — it’s no longer enough to just buy an apartment for €500,000 — but it has got a little easier for Americans thanks to a new fund, LXL Ventures, that offers golden visa-eligible investing exclusively to clients from the United States, according to Newsweek.
“While golden visa funds have certain limitations, we’ve structured this one to align as closely as possible with the style of portfolios they know and trust,” John McNertney, a former Merrill Lynch wealth manager now based in Lisbon, told Newsweek.
Portuguese take to the streets in protest of Israel’s treatment of aid flotilla activists and war against Palestine
Thousands of Portuguese took to the streets last Thursday demanding that the Israeli navy release the activists it has detained for attempting to deliver aid to the residents of the Gaza strip on by boat, according to euronews.
People were also calling for sanctions against Israel for its two-year war against Palestine, the publication writes.
Sapo put the number of protesters in Lisbon at more than 3,000, while euronews counted around 1,000 at the Israeli embassy alone.
During an incident at the train station Rossio, a young man who tried to climb on top of a docked train was electrocuted and subsequently taken to hospital, according to Sapo, which noted that the protests were largely peaceful.
We have photos from the ground thanks to one of our supporters, Denise G.:
The four Portuguese activists who had been detained last week by the Israeli navy were released on Sunday, according to euronews.
Portugal blackout due to “obsolete” electricity grid
The blackout in April, which left 60 million across the Iberian peninsula without power for hours, was the first of its kind — and was caused by an obsolete grid that was unable to restart after what experts said was “cascading overvoltage,” according to euronews.
As Damian Cortinas, chairman of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity told reporters last week, “it’s not complicated, but needs to be required,” according to euronews.
