An opinion piece by Dr Rui Assis Passos for IM GlobalWealth.com
In late 2024, Portugal amended its Nationality Law to address prolonged administrative backlogs affecting residence permits, particularly under the Golden Visa programme. A temporary provision allowed the required five years of legal residence for nationality to be counted from the date a residence permit application was submitted, rather than from the date the permit was formally granted.
In 2025, the government moved to repeal this provision and, through transitional clauses, attempted to apply a stricter interpretation to nationality applications already pending. This legislative move was challenged before Portugal’s Constitutional Court, which was asked to determine whether Parliament could retroactively alter the legal framework relied upon by investors and applicants already in the system.
What follows examines the Court’s ruling and its implications for Golden Visa investors and their families.
They did not come to Portugal for the sun. They came for a contract.
Not a written contract, signed in blue ink, but a composite one:
– the Nationality Law,
– the Golden Visa statute,
– the promise that, in a State governed by law, time would not be used against those who played by the rules.
They subscribed €500,000 into regulated funds when real estate was already off the table.
They filed residence applications.
They waited. Years, in some cases.
Children started learning Portuguese; parents started counting days and stamps. The business plan was simple: capital now, certainty later.
And then the clock broke.
I. The Investors and the Clock
In every Golden Visa story there is a date that matters more than all the others.
For years it was the date of the first residence permit: the day the State finally said “you are legally here”. From there, five years of legal residence would open the door to nationality under Article 6(1)(b) of the Nationality Law.
But administrative reality refused to cooperate.
SEF was extinguished, AIMA was created, and around 400,000 migration files fell into a trench of bureaucracy. Golden Visa holders discovered that, in practice, “five years” could mean seven or eight, because the State was slow to recognise what was already true in life: they lived here.
For once, Parliament looked at the backlog and did not pretend it was anecdotal. Through the 2024 organic amendment, a new rule arrived: Article 15(4) of the Nationality Law. It said, in substance:
For the purpose of counting legal residence, time begins when the residence permit is requested, provided it is eventually granted.
For Golden Visa investors, this was not a technical footnote. It was the difference between a delay and a derailment.
The years lost inside AIMA’s systems started to count.
The five-year horizon moved back towards what had been promised in every deck, Zoom call and prospectus.
For a brief interval, law and fairness were aligned.
II. The Counter-Move
Exceptional solutions rarely age well in politics.
Once a special task force was deployed to clear AIMA’s backlog, the narrative shifted. What had been adopted as a shield for investors was recast as a “drastic reduction” of residence requirements and an “unusual” rule that counted time before any stable title existed.
The reaction came in the form of a new legislative package:
– Repeal Article 15(4) going forward.
– Restore the old logic: the five years start only when the first residence permit is granted.
– Tighten naturalisation conditions in several respects.
For future applicants, the message was clear: the road would be longer and narrower.
But buried in the transitional provisions was a more dangerous move, almost invisible to the untrained eye.
Two short paragraphs attempted to do three things at once:
– Declare that, even for pending nationality procedures, all requirements had to be met on the date of filing.
– Label this as a mere “interpretation” of the existing Nationality Law.
– Allow that “interpretation” to project backwards, affecting those who had already applied under the previous framework.
Translated into the life of a Golden Visa investor, the operation was stark.
An investor who filed a nationality request relying on Article 15(4), and on the established possibility of perfecting certain requirements during the procedure, could suddenly be told that only the situation on the day of filing mattered – and that the years that became “legal residence” later, following the grant of the residence permit, simply did not count.
The State would be free to say: “You never really had five years when you pressed ‘submit’. The rest is your problem.”
That is how a technical clause becomes a weaponised calendar.
“For future applicants, the labyrinth will be longer.”
III. The Tribunal Constitucional Enters
When the case reached the Constitutional Court, the questions were deceptively simple:
Can Parliament revoke the more generous counting rule for the future?
Can it rewrite the rules of the game for those already inside the system and call it “interpretation”?
The Court separated the two issues with surgical precision.
- Repealing Article 15(4): freedom to harden the future
On the first point, the Court was consistent and restrained.
It noted that Article 15(4) was introduced as an exceptional response to an abnormal administrative backlog. Once that backlog was being addressed through a dedicated mission structure, Parliament remained free to recalibrate the balance between access to nationality and the demands of stable integration.
Legal certainty does not freeze emergency solutions into permanent entitlements.
Result: the repeal of Article 15(4) for future cases is constitutional.
For investors who have not yet triggered the nationality procedure, the message is unambiguous: the five-year clock once again starts at the granting of the first residence permit, not at the initial request.
From a Golden Visa perspective, the product has become more time-intensive.
- The “interpretative” manoeuvre on pending cases: a red line
The real turning point lies elsewhere — in the treatment of pending nationality procedures.
The Court examined the rule that:
– Required all requirements to be met at the moment of filing,
– Declared this requirement merely “interpretative”, and
– Was clearly designed to affect applications already in progress.
Here, the Court did not hesitate.
It recalled that, under the previous regime, administrative practice and case law accepted that certain requirements could be perfected during the course of the procedure, with the relevant moment often being the final decision rather than the filing date.
The old law was neither obscure nor genuinely controversial. It did not require legislative “clarification”.
A norm is not interpretative simply because the legislator calls it so.
More importantly, the Court invoked the constitutional principle of protection of legitimate expectations – the proteção da confiança anchored in Article 2 of the Constitution.
Rendered in plain investor terms:
If the State invites you into a legal route under a given framework, and you take real positions, invest, relocate, restructure your life, based on that framework, it may tighten the rules for those who come after you, but it cannot retroactively change the terms of a journey you have already begun.
Declaring a materially new rule as “interpretative” in order to affect pending cases was held to breach constitutional trust.
Outcome: the “interpretative” transitional paragraphs were declared unconstitutional.
For Golden Visa investors with pending nationality applications, this is the decisive result.
Their procedures remain governed by the law in force at the time of filing, including the more favourable understanding of time and requirements. The State is prevented from moving the finish line retroactively and then claiming it was always there.
IV. What This Really Means for Golden Visa Families
Behind dense provisions and article numbers, the judgment delivers three clear messages to the investment-migration community:
Portugal can harden the Golden Visa path for the future. The repeal of Article 15(4) means new investors must assume that administrative waiting time will no longer count as legal residence.
Portugal cannot erase reliance already created. For those who have already filed nationality requests, the Constitutional Court has drawn a firm line against retroactive traps disguised as interpretation.
Trust is now a legal asset, not a marketing slogan.
The protection of legitimate expectations operates here as a guarantee clause: it does not promise generosity forever, but it forbids rewriting yesterday’s terms after investors have already committed.
V. Epilogue: The Ledger and the Labyrinth
In the Golden Visa world, investors routinely price political risk, fund risk and currency risk.
This decision is a reminder that time risk is just as real.
Time lost in administration.Time shifted by legislative amendment. Time that either counts — or is erased — depending on how the law defines “legal residence”.
The Constitutional Court did not reopen the gates. It did something more subtle, and ultimately more important for serious investors: it reminded the Republic that even in turbulent cycles, there are rules about changing the rules.
For future applicants, the labyrinth will be longer.
For those already inside, one point is now settled: The State may redraw the map, but it may not pretend that old paths never existed, or that the years lived under them were merely a misunderstanding.
𝑩𝒊𝒐𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒉𝒚
Dr Rui Assis Passos is a seasoned Portuguese lawyer and the founder of ERG Legal in Lisbon. A key contributor to Portugal’s recent Golden Visa reform, he brings over two decades of experience in immigration, taxation, and estate planning. Over the years, Dr Passos has advised hundreds of high-net-worth individuals on strategic legal pathways across Europe and the Gulf.
𝑭𝒐𝒓 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒏 𝑹𝒖𝒊 𝑨𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒔 𝑷𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒐𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑬𝑹𝑮 𝑳𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒍, 𝒗𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒘𝒘.𝒆𝒓𝒈𝒍𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒍.𝒑𝒕
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