Portugal’s citizenship changes are changing

The Portuguese Parliament has approved a reform to the Nationality Law that introduces longer residence periods in order to qualify for Portuguese Citizenship. The reform has not yet entered into force because the final text still needs to be approved by the President of the Republic and later publishing in Diário da República.

It is important to emphasize that the path to permanent residency remains the same. Foreign residents can still apply for permanent residence after 5 years, which grants them nearly the same rights as citizenship, including the ability to live, work, and travel freely within Portugal and the Schengen Area and much lower minimum stay in the country requirements.

These changes align Portugal with most of the other countries in the European Union. For example, Spain and Italy both require 10 years of residency before being able to apply for citizenship, while Germany and Austria require 8 years.

10 Years to Citizenship

The most relevant change is the time required to qualify for Portuguese citizenship.

The minimum residence permit to qualify for Portuguese citizenship is now:

• 10 years for most foreign nationals,
• 7 years For EU and CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries) citizens.

Counting of residence periods

Another key update is related to how residence periods are calculated.
Under the new rules, the counter starts from the date the first residence card is issued, not from the date the residence permit application was submitted.

This technical change may extend the effective waiting time before eligibility for some residents, particularly those whose residence cards were issued several months after initial approval, which we believe is an unfair measure.

Additional changes

There are procedural and documental changes that have been introduced:

• Stricter criminal record criteria, with the disqualification threshold reduced to crimes punishable by two or more years of imprisonment.
• Proof of financial self-sufficiency.
• End of the Sephardic Jewish naturalisation route.
• New cultural and civic knowledge requirements, to be detailed later by specific regulations.

What happens next?

The law now needs to be reviewed by the President of the Republic, who may approve it, return it to Parliament for revision, or send it to the Constitutional Court to analyze if the provisions are aligned with Constitutional rules.

Once published in the Diário da República, the reform will take effect immediately. However, applications already submitted before publication will continue to be processed under the previous five-year rule.

Summary and our take

Discussions on increasing the minimum residency period for citizenship have been on-going for years: but finally, we're seeing these changes be cemented into law. It could be a matter of time before this is finalised, but it's likely that the law will enter force in the near future. This brings Portugal in line with most other European countries.

A quick summary of the key impacts:

• Requesting Permanent Residency is still possible after living  5 years in Portugal.
• Citizenship residence period extended to 10 years (7 for EU and CPLP citizens).
• Residence counting starts from the date the first residence card is issued.
• In practice, permanent residency already offers nearly the same rights as citizenship.

When the law enters in force, getting citizenship will take longer but the fact that getting permanent residence after 5 years of residing in the country is still possible ensures that practical impacts of this new law are not as big as it might seem in the first place.

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