107 New Conservadores Are Sworn In, Portugal's First Registry Recruitment in Twenty Years, and the Minister Promises Near Normality by December

One hundred and seven new conservadores were sworn in at Portugal's Ministry of Justice on Friday, the first time in twenty years that the state has recruited for the role. The Justice Minister, Rita Alarcão Júdice, told reporters afterwards that their arrival makes it possible to reopen conservatórias in parts of the country where the counters have been shut for more than a decade.

A conservador is the official who signs off a birth, a marriage, a company registration or a change of ownership on a property. Nothing moves through a Portuguese registry without one, and for most of the past decade there have not been enough of them: a union stoppage last year put the shortfall at 279 conservador vacancies, 38 percent of the establishment, alongside 2,731 gaps among registry officials.

Twenty-six thousand files, and a union that will not sign

The ministry says the backlog-recovery plan it started in June has already cleared 26,000 delayed files. Some of the newly sworn-in conservadores have been working on that plan already. Asked about repeated criticism from the Sindicato dos Trabalhadores dos Registos e Notariado that the recovery has not been transparent, the minister was blunt about where she thinks the complaint comes from.

"The union, as everyone knows, has not been following this process of transformation and of renewal and of valuing the careers, because it did not reach agreement with the government," she said. "So it is normal that it should want to criticise some aspects of the process too." She maintained that the process "was transparent" and had been run "in the best and most correct way", with results "society is already feeling".

She did concede the underlying problem: the Instituto dos Registos e Notariado is short of people, and her stated target is only to "reach the end of the year with a situation close to normality". That is a careful phrase for a service where the backlog grew 13 percent in a single month earlier this year, and where the "company in an hour" service now takes months.

The pay deal that lands in November

Separately, Friday's Council of Ministers approved the diploma putting into effect the pay agreement the government reached with a group of sector unions, though not with the STRN. It rewrites the salary table for conservadores and registry officials and sets out mechanisms for repositioning people within the career.

Payments under the new tables should start in November, with retroactive effect to 1 July 2026, and further rises are scheduled for this year and next. The minister put the typical gain at about 200 euros more a month, reaching roughly 85 percent of these professionals; the remainder already earn above the table.

What this means for expats

• Waiting times should ease, slowly: 107 conservadores is the first real staffing injection in twenty years, but the ministry's own target is only "close to normality" by December.
• Reopened counters matter outside the cities: some conservatórias closed more than ten years ago are now expected to reopen, which shortens the drive for anyone registering a property or a birth in the interior.
• The pay fight is not settled: the STRN did not sign, and it was the union that took conservatórias offline for a week in June. Further stoppages remain possible.
• The money was trailed in August: the plan promised up to 288 euros a month more, backdated. Friday's diploma is the version that actually reaches payslips.
• Physical security is a separate weakness: in August, five hundred citizen cards and two hundred passports left a Chaves registry office through a broken door.