Author: Rui Assis Passos of ERG Family Office & Legal – Special Contribution to IMGlobalWealth.com
Lisbon, 1 April 2026 | It was supposed to be an ordinary Tuesday afternoon at São Bento. Instead, the marble corridors crackled with last-minute negotiations, shifting alliances, and the unmistakable scent of a political bargain being struck. By early evening, the Assembly of the Republic had spoken, and Portugal’s path to citizenship would never look the same again.
The revised Nationality Law decree was approved 152 to 64, clearing the two-thirds threshold required for organic legislation. A companion decree amending the Penal Code, introducing loss of nationality as an accessory criminal penalty, passed 151 to 65. The chamber was sharply divided: PSD, Chega, CDS-PP, and Liberal Initiative voted in favour; the Socialists, Livre, PCP, Left Bloc, and PAN voted against.
“Permanent residency after five years remains unaffected. The Golden Visa programme itself was not part of the parliamentary debate. But for those whose investment and life planning was built around a five-year citizenship horizon, the landscape has shifted, and uncertainty will persist until the constitutional process is exhausted”
What Was Approved
The decree doubles the residency requirement for naturalisation: from five years to seven years for citizens of CPLP countries and the European Union, and from five years to 10 years for all other nationalities. Individuals convicted of serious crimes and sentenced to three or more years of effective imprisonment will be barred from acquiring Portuguese nationality. A separate provision allows judges to strip nationality as an additional penalty for those sentenced to five or more years for the gravest offences, including aggravated homicide, slavery, and human trafficking.
Critically, the approved text contains no transitional regime. There is no safeguard for residents who began their journey under the five-year rule and now find themselves midstream with the goalposts moved. However, nationality requests already submitted at the time of entry into force will be assessed under the former legal framework, a narrow but important distinction.
The PSD-Chega Pact
The deal was announced on the afternoon of 1 April, hours before the vote. In exchange for Chega’s support, the PSD and CDS-PP lowered the sentencing threshold for blocking nationality acquisition from four to three years and accepted Chega’s five-year threshold, rather than the originally proposed six, for the loss-of-nationality penalty. The Socialists, who had championed transitional protections for existing residents, were sidelined entirely.
The parliamentary session was, by all accounts, deeply conflictual. The ideological rift between integration-minded lawmakers and those driving a tougher stance on citizenship was laid bare for all to see.
What Happens Next: Three Possible Paths
The approved decree now travels to the Palácio de Belém, where President António José Seguro, who took office in January 2026 following the presidential election and is affiliated with the Socialist Party, must decide its fate. The options are clear:
a) Promulgation. The President signs the decree, it is published in the Diário da República, and it enters into force. Given the political distance between the President and the parliamentary majority that approved this text, outright promulgation would be a surprise, though it cannot be excluded.
b) Referral to the Constitutional Court. The President may request a preventive constitutional review, as his predecessor did with the immigration reform decree in 2025, a decision that ultimately led to the Constitutional Court striking down five of seven measures. The decree would remain suspended until the Court delivers its ruling. Given the absence of transitional protections, the potential violation of the principle of legitimate expectations (proteção da confiança), and the precedent set by the Court’s December 2025 ruling, which found the earlier version’s lack of safeguards problematic, this is a distinct possibility.
c) Political veto. The President may simply return the decree to Parliament without promulgation. In this scenario, the Assembly could override the veto with an absolute majority of all deputies (116 of 230), a threshold the current coalition comfortably surpasses.
There is a fourth variable: the Socialist Party may itself trigger a preventive constitutional review, as it did in November 2025, sending the legislation directly to the Constitutional Court and temporarily blocking presidential action. The Socialists have been vocal about constitutional deficiencies persisting in this revised text, particularly the absence of transitional protections, and they have form in using this mechanism.
The Constitutional Question
The December 2025 ruling of the Constitutional Court looms large. In that decision, the Court unanimously found the original decree’s provisions unconstitutional, primarily on grounds of violating the principle of equality. The absence of a transitional regime was flagged as a concern, and the Court was explicit: pending nationality applications must be assessed under the legal framework in force at the time of submission.
The revised decree addresses some of these concerns, but not all. The continued absence of transitional protections for residents who structured their lives and investments around a five-year pathway is, in our view, a constitutional vulnerability. The principle of legitimate expectations is not a mere policy preference; it is a pillar of the democratic rule of law, recognised and protected under Portugal’s constitutional order. Removing it abruptly, without safeguards, risks reopening the same constitutional wound.
The Investor Impact
For Golden Visa holders and long-term residents, the immediate practical effect is this: the decree is not yet law. The current five-year pathway remains in force until promulgation and publication. But the signal is unmistakable. Portugal is moving towards longer naturalisation timelines, and the political appetite for transitional protections has evaporated in the current parliamentary arithmetic.
Permanent residency after five years remains unaffected. The Golden Visa programme itself was not part of the parliamentary debate. But for those whose investment and life planning was built around a five-year citizenship horizon, the landscape has shifted, and uncertainty will persist until the constitutional process is exhausted.
ERG Family Office & Legal View
“We are witnessing a significant turning point in Portuguese nationality policy. The approval of this decree, without transitional protections, raises legitimate constitutional concerns, particularly for residents and investors who committed to Portugal under a clear and settled legal framework. The principle of legitimate expectations is not a technicality; it is a constitutional safeguard that took decades to build. We expect the coming weeks to bring further institutional scrutiny, whether from the President of the Republic or the Constitutional Court. Until then, the current law stands, and those considering their options should act with both urgency and prudence.”
The vote is cast, but the constitutional chapter is far from written. Lisbon’s spring may prove as turbulent as last summer’s.
Biography
Rui Assis Passos is a seasoned Portuguese lawyer and founder of ERG Family Office & Legal in Lisbon. With over two decades of experience in immigration, taxation, and estate planning, he has advised hundreds of high-net-worth individuals on legal pathways across Europe and the Gulf.
A key contributor to Portugal’s recent Golden Visa reform, Dr Rui Assis Passos is internationally recognised as a leading authority in investment migration, a frequent speaker at global conferences, contributor to IMGW News, and an active interlocutor with AIMA in parliamentary and regulatory contexts.
For more information on Rui Assis Passos and ERG Family Office & Legal, visit www.erglegal.pt
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