More than 500 foreign citizens holding Portuguese golden visas are organizing a collective legal challenge against the Portuguese state following sudden revisions to the country’s Nationality Law. The group of investors, which is predominantly American but encompasses multiple nationalities, initially coordinated through WhatsApp and is currently planning to register as a formal association to pursue their legal options.
The contentious legislation, officially promulgated by President António José Seguro on May 3, significantly extends the timeline required for naturalization. For most foreign nationals, the law doubles the required waiting period from five to ten years. Citizens of the European Union (EU) and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) are now subject to a seven-year naturalization requirement.
Passed on April 1 after a political agreement between the governing Social Democratic Party (PSD) and Chega, the law notably lacks a formal transitional regime. Most critically for investors, the new legislation mandates that the residency clock now begins only when the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) issues a residence permit, rather than when the initial application is submitted.
Legal advocates representing the investors argue that the state is unfairly penalizing applicants for its own administrative failures. Sara Sousa Rebolo, partner and co-founder of Prime Legal, pointed out that many applicants have already waited three to five years just for AIMA to act on their files due to severe administrative backlogs and a lack of institutional resources.
Rebolo argued that the state’s actions violate the investors’ “qualified legitimate expectation” of citizenship. She stated that it is “not legally neutral for the same state to have benefited from the investment, delayed the process, and then sought to shift the consequences of that delay onto individuals by retroactively worsening their path to citizenship”.
Madalena Monteiro, founder of Liberty Legal, similarly criticized the legislative changes, noting that “legal stability and the protection of legitimate trust must prevail over rushed solutions”. Monteiro highlighted the frustration of the investors, stating that they “simply cannot accept such a significant change to the rules in the middle of the game”.
While multiple law firms are advising clients to wait for the final implementing regulations before formally filing, the investor group’s strategy is clear. One investor indicated that they plan to “exhaust the Portuguese legal system and then assess what legal avenues exist at the European level”. According to Rebolo, potential legal paths include state liability claims for damages, challenging the constitutionality of the provisions in national courts, and eventually escalating to the European Court of Human Rights if domestic remedies fail.
The fallout from the revised law is already extending beyond the impending lawsuit. The sudden shift in policy is producing a severe chilling effect on the Portuguese investment market, with existing investors actively canceling their pending applications and potential new applicants being deterred from bringing their investments to Portugal.
Legal experts warn that the ultimate casualty of the revised law may be the nation’s reputation. As Rebolo observed, changing the rules to the detriment of families who made long-term investments based on a previous legal framework will “affect the credibility of the Portuguese legal system as a whole”.