Portuguese Parliament reduces time for citizenship to 5 years

The Portuguese Parliament has approved relevant changes to the general Law of Nationality easing up the requirements for obtaining the Portuguese nationality. These changes have been published in the Official Gazette on 5^th July 2018 and are now in full force.

Some of the most relevant changes to the law, include the reduction from 6 to 5 years only for the minimum period of residency required to obtain nationality and also the automatic nationality for individuals born in Portugal with parents that have been residents for at least 2 years.

Regarding the reduction of the time of citizenship, article 6, number 1, paragraph b), establishes that the Portuguese Government will grant citizenship for foreigners that have been resident for a minimum of 5 years.

As to children born in Portugal, article 1^st, number 1, paragraph f), grants nationality to individuals born in Portugal, children of foreign parents, when at the time of birth one of the parents has legal residency for at least 2 years.

The Government will now implement the necessary changes to the Regulation of Nationality.  The changes should be decided within 30 days from the approval of the changes to the Law of Nationality.

Golden Visa Portugal - Statistics May 2018

The Portuguese Immigration Services (SEF) have released the statistics of the Golden Visa programme up to the end of May 2018.  These latest numbers show that the total investment directly arising from the programme is now over 3.8 bn Euro.

 According to these latest statistics, there were a total of 6,279 investors and 10,643 family members approved by the end of May 2018.  As it has been the case since the program was launched, the preferred investment is still property, with over 3.4 bn euro in this category of investment.

We, at EDGE have witnessed the significant improvement of the processing times for applications as our clients are getting approved in around 2 to 4 months on average.

Please contact us if you have any questions or if you need assistance with your initial application or renewal.

Golden Visa - Statistics February 2018

The Portuguese Immigration Services (SEF) have released the statistics of the Golden Visa programme up to 28th February 2018.  These latest numbers show that the total investment directly arising from the programme is 3.6 bn Euro.

 According to these latest statistics, there were a total of 5,876 investors and 9,861 family members approved by the end of February 2018.  as to the investment types, the vast majority of investors selected property as their qualifying investment.

The recently implemented changes to the procedures around the submission and processing of residency applications have been proving to be very effective.  The rate of approvals has increased and the waiting times for both initial applications and renewals has improved substantially, particularly for applications submitted in the Immigration Department's offices located outside of Lisbon. 

Please contact us if you have any questions on these changes or if you need assistance with your initial application or renewal.

Golden Visa - Statistics January 2018

The Portuguese Immigration Services (SEF) have released the statistics of the Golden Visa programme up to the end of January 2018.  The recently released statistics show that the total investment brought by the programme continues to grow every month and by the end of January had passed 3.5 bn Euro.

 According to the updated numbers, there were a total of 5,717 investors and 9,559 family members approved up to the end of January 2018, with property still being the investment of choice of the majority of the investors.

The authorities have recently implemented changes in the procedures of submission and processing of applications and the improvements have been very substantial.  The rate of approval of initial applications and renewals has accelerated in a very significant way.

Golden Visa - Statistics

The Portuguese Immigration Services (SEF) have released the statistics of the Golden Visa programme up to the end of November 2017.  These latest numbers show that the total investment brought by the programme is over 3.38 bn Euro.

 According to these statistics, there were a total of 5,505 investors and 9,212 family members approved up to the end of November 2017, with the vast majority of investors still selecting property as their qualifying investment.

The current government has decided to widen the scope of qualifying investments and the corresponding changes to the General Immigration Law have just come into force.  As a result, it is expected that the number of applications will continue to grow in the coming times.

New locations for SEF appointments

Following the information we at EDGE received recently directly from the Portuguese Government, the Immigration Services - SEF -  have just released the regional offices that will be accepting residency and renewal applications regardless of the location of the investment.

The new locations released today are the following:

- Evora; 

- Santarem  

- Porto 

- Vila Real 

- Viana do Castelo 

- Figueira da Foz 

- Coimbra 

- Guarda 

- Viseu 

- Faro  

- Tavira

- Portimao

This measure has been implemented in order to improve the efficiency of the services and the time frames for the submission of applications, which had been experiencing difficulties in recent times. Prior to this measure, it was mandatory that the submission of residency and renewal applications took place in the SEF office of the location of the investment.

The Government has also announced that it has been studying and implementing new measures to improve the overall efficiency of the programme.  One of these measures is the set up of an electronic payment system, which will facilitate and expedite dramatically the system for payment of the administrative fees and consequently reduce the time for the issuing of the residency cards.

We at EDGE were selected to be part of the trial period and we are proud to be have been able to contribute to this new system that has now been formally been made available to anyone in the Golden Visa programme.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions on the above.

Portugal is 3rd safest country in the world

The Global Peace Index published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, which evaluates and ranks countries in terms of security and peace, has placed Portugal in the 3rd place on the World's Safest and most Peaceful Countries. The complete index report shows that Portugal as climbed two places from last year and is now in the top 3 of the safest countries in the world together with Iceland and New Zealand.

According to the report "Europe remains the most peaceful region in the world, with eight of the ten most peaceful countries coming from this region", which also means that Portugal has become the 2nd most peaceful country in Europe, leading from countries such as Austria, Denmark, Germany and Spain.

Also, the report confirms the impressive improvement in Portugal's ranking in just the last five years:"Portugal moved to third position, its highest ranking since the inception of the index, a notable improvement given that it was ranked 16th less than five years ago. Portugal has improved on 12 of the 23 GPI indicators, most notably on weapons imports and violent demonstrations."

This report only comes to reinforce that Portugal has become one of the most attractive countries in the world for foreign investors and their families.