Government submits proposal to Parliament to amend nationality law effective June 19

The proposal to amend the nationality law submitted this Tuesday to the Assembly of the Republic (AR) by the Government takes effect on June 19. The aim is to respond to the mass requests submitted after the legislative elections.

The diploma “generally proposes the application of the new nationality regime only for the future, with one important exception: the procedures of the naturalization rule regime pending on the date of the future publication of the law, but which were initiated after June 19, 2025, the date on which the Program of the XXV Constitutional Government was made viable”.

According to the text of the diploma itself, cited by the Lusa news agency, the Government considers that, “since the election period it was known that the winning Coalition intended to impose greater demands on the Portuguese nationality regime, in order to guarantee that it always has an underlying effective and genuine connection to the national community”.

At the time, “it was clear to everyone — citizens and immigrants — that, among other significant changes, the temporal and material requirements for naturalization would be increased in density and expanded in number.”

Hence, after the parliamentary viability of the executive program, “a movement of massive submission of requests for acquisition of nationality through naturalization was generated”.

These requests, the Government considers, “constitute rather a last-minute attempt to benefit from the highly permissive requirements of the outgoing legal regime”, which provided for a period of residence in Portugal of five years to access citizenship.

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