After a Car Accident in Portugal in 2026: A Practical Guide to the Declaração Amigável, the Eight Days to Tell Your Insurer, and the Fundo de Garantia Automóvel

Most people in Portugal find out how the motor insurance system works on the worst possible day, standing at the side of a road with a stranger, holding a form neither of them has read before. This guide is the version you want to have read first.

The rules come almost entirely from one instrument: Decreto-Lei n.º 291/2007, of 21 August, which governs the seguro obrigatório de responsabilidade civil automóvel (compulsory motor third-party liability insurance) and was last amended by Decreto-Lei n.º 26/2025. A second law, Decreto-Lei n.º 72/2008, the Lei do Contrato de Seguro (Insurance Contract Act), supplies the deadline for telling your own insurer. Between them they set every clock in this article.

Two things are worth saying at the outset. The deadlines in this system run against the insurer, not against you. And the single most valuable thing you can do at the roadside costs nothing and cuts every one of those deadlines in half.

Who has to be insured, and for how much

Article 4 is the rule everything rests on: a vehicle habitually parked in Portugal may only circulate if the civil liability arising from an accident in that circulation is covered by insurance. Railway vehicles are outside it, as are metro vehicles, though trams running on rails are inside it and so is liability for accidents where the rails cross a public road. Agricultural machines not subject to registration are outside. So are vehicles used in purely agricultural or industrial functions, and vehicles that have been withdrawn from use and prohibited from circulating by an administrative procedure or another verifiable measure.

Article 6 says whose duty it is. The obligation falls on the owner, except in three cases: under a usufruct it falls on the usufructuary, under a sale with retention of title it falls on the buyer, and under a finance lease it falls on the lessee. If somebody else takes out a policy on the vehicle that satisfies the decree-law, the owner's duty is discharged for as long as that policy is in force. Garages, and anyone whose business is manufacturing, assembling, converting, buying, selling, repairing, recovering or testing vehicles, must separately insure the liability they incur when they drive customers' vehicles in the course of that work.

Article 12 sets the minimum sums insured: 6,450,000 euros per accident for bodily injury, and 1,300,000 euros per accident for material damage. Those figures are reviewed and updated every five years, on a proposal from the European Commission, in line with the harmonised index of consumer prices. Article 13 doubles them for contracts covering collective transport and multiplies them by eight for sporting events, in both cases capped per injured person at the ordinary single amounts.

Those ceilings matter for a reason that is easy to miss. They are not just the insurer's exposure; they are also the ceiling on what the state's guarantee fund will pay, and they decide whether the simplified settlement procedure in this law applies at all. The chapter containing the reasonable-offer regime does not apply to accidents whose total compensable damage exceeds the legal minimum cover.

At the roadside: the declaração amigável

The declaração amigável de acidente automóvel is the joint statement that both drivers complete and sign at the scene. It has a specific and very concrete legal consequence, written into article 36(6)(a): where there is a declaração amigável, the insurer's settlement deadlines are cut to half.

That is the whole of its legal magic, and it is enough. Every timetable in the next section halves. A survey deadline of eight working days becomes four. A decision deadline of thirty working days becomes fifteen.

Signing it is not an admission of fault. It is a record of the facts both drivers agree on: date, time, place, vehicles, registrations, insurers, policy numbers, the point of impact, the direction of travel and a sketch. Where you disagree, that is what the observations box is for. What matters is that the version each of you gives is your own, that you keep a signed copy, and that you do not leave the scene with an unsigned form or with a promise to sort it out later. A driver who will not give you insurance details is a driver whose details you should be collecting some other way, and if a police force attends, the occurrence report becomes the record instead.

The other half of article 36(6) runs the other way. The same deadlines double when there are exceptional weather events, or an exceptionally high number of accidents happening at the same time. After a storm, expect the clock to be twice as long, lawfully.

Eight days to tell your own insurer

This is the one deadline that runs against you, and it comes from a different law. Article 100 of the Lei do Contrato de Seguro requires the policyholder, the insured or the beneficiary to notify the insurer of the occurrence of a claim within the period fixed in the contract or, where the contract fixes none, within the eight days immediately following the day on which they learned of it. The notification has to set out the circumstances, the possible causes and the consequences. You must also give the insurer any relevant further information it asks for.

Article 101 sets out what happens if you are late, and it is more nuanced than the folklore suggests. The contract may provide for a reduction in the insurer's payment, measured by the damage your failure caused it. It may provide for loss of cover only where the failure was deliberate and caused significant damage to the insurer. Neither applies if the insurer found out about the claim by another route inside the eight days, or if you can show you could not reasonably have reported it sooner.

And then the provision that matters most to anyone injured by somebody else's late paperwork: none of that is opposable to the injured parties in a compulsory liability insurance. The insurer pays the victim regardless, and takes a right of recourse against the person who failed to report, within the same limits.

The insurer's clock, in working days

Article 36 is the spine of the system. From the moment a claim is reported to it by the policyholder, the insured or the injured third party, the insurer must:

• make first contact within two working days, and book any surveys that need to happen;
• complete those surveys within the eight working days following the end of that first period;
• where dismantling is needed, notify you of the date the surveys will conclude, and conclude them within a maximum of twelve working days from the end of that first period;
• make the survey reports available within four working days of completing them, along with any investigation reports needed to understand them;
• communicate, in writing or electronically, whether it accepts or declines liability, within thirty working days counted from the end of that first period, informing the policyholder or insured and the injured third party;
• and say in that same communication that the vehicle's owner may give the order to repair, bearing the cost until the insurer has established responsibility and to the extent of what it establishes.

Two qualifications. Where the insurer does not have effective direction of the repair, the survey deadlines run instead from the day the workshop is available and the owner has authorised the work. The insurer has effective direction where the workshop doing the survey was named by it and accepted by the injured party. And all these deadlines are suspended while the insurer is carrying out an investigation on a founded suspicion of fraud.

There is also a right that policyholders rarely use. If the insurer decides to accept liability, contradicting a claim form in which you said you were not responsible, article 36(4) gives you five working days from that communication to put in whatever information you think helps. The insurer then has two working days to give you its final decision in writing.

Throughout, article 36(7) requires the insurer to keep you regularly informed of how the settlement is progressing, and article 33 requires it to have given you legible, simple and objective written information about the procedures it follows and the deadlines it commits to, kept publicly available for consultation.

The reasonable offer, and what a late one costs

When liability is not contested and the damage is quantifiable, in whole or in part, the insurer's position under article 38 has to take the form of a proposta razoável, a reasonable offer of compensation. The law defines the term in one line: a reasonable offer is one that does not generate a significant imbalance to the disadvantage of the injured party.

Missing that deadline carries interest at double the legal rate, applied either to the compensation the court later fixes, or to the amount the insurer eventually offered outside the deadline and you accepted, running from the end of the deadline. Making an offer that is manifestly insufficient carries the same double-rate interest, calculated on the difference between what was offered and what the court awards, from the day after the deadline expired until the date of the judicial decision.

Where the insurer is not accepting liability, article 40 applies instead. If liability has been rejected, or has not been clearly determined, or the damage is not fully quantifiable, the communication has to be a resposta fundamentada: a reasoned reply on every point raised in the claim. Delay here is expensive in a way that is unusual in Portuguese law. Besides interest from the first day of delay, the insurer becomes liable for 200 euros for every day of delay, owed in equal parts to the injured party and to the insurance supervisor.

Total loss: the 100 and 120 percent test

Article 41 defines when a vehicle is treated as a perda total, so that the obligation is met in cash rather than by repair. One of three things has to be true: the vehicle has disappeared or been totally destroyed; repair is materially impossible or technically inadvisable because its safety conditions have been gravely affected; or the estimated cost of repairing the damage, added to the value of the salvage, exceeds 100 percent of the vehicle's market value if it is less than two years old, or 120 percent if it is more than two years old.

The compensation is the vehicle's market value immediately before the accident, which the law defines as its replacement value at that moment, minus the value of the salvage if the salvage stays with you.

When an insurer proposes to settle on a total-loss basis, article 41(4) obliges it to give you three things at the same time: the identity of whoever quantified the estimated repair cost and assessed whether repair was feasible; the market value of the vehicle immediately before the accident; and the estimated value of the salvage together with the identity of whoever undertakes to buy it at that valuation. If you are given a total-loss figure without those three elements, you have not been given what the law requires. Where there is a total loss, the registration is cancelled under article 119 of the Código da Estrada.

The replacement vehicle

Article 42 is widely underused. Where the damaged vehicle is immobilised, the injured party is entitled to a replacement vehicle of similar characteristics from the date on which the insurer accepts exclusive liability for making good the damage. The insurer has to tell you where to collect it and on what conditions, and the replacement has to carry insurance cover equal to that on the immobilised vehicle, at the insurer's cost.

The entitlement ends, in a total loss, at the moment the insurer makes the compensation payment available to you. Where the repair is being done at a workshop you chose yourself, the insurer provides the replacement for strictly the time the survey report says the repair needs. And none of this stops you being compensated, under the general law, for transport costs you ran up beyond that, during a period when you had no replacement vehicle.

Getting paid, and being paid late

Article 43 sets the payment deadline: unless agreed otherwise, the insurer must pay the injured party within eight working days counted from the date it accepted liability, on presentation of the documents needed for payment. Miss it, and the insurer owes default interest at double the legal rate on the amount due and unpaid, from the date it should have been paid until the date it actually is.

One practical trap sits in article 43(4). Where there is a total loss and the insurer buys the salvage, payment depends on your handing over the documento único automóvel, or the registration title and the vehicle logbook. Find those documents before you start chasing the money.

Article 86 puts numbers on what all this is worth to the regulator. Breaching the settlement duties in article 36(1), (5) and (6), in article 37(1) to (3) and (6), in articles 38 to 40 and in article 42(1) and (5) is an administrative offence punishable by a fine of 3,000 to 44,890 euros, where no civil sanction applies. Breaching article 33, article 36(7), article 41, article 44(2) and article 45(2) carries 750 to 24,940 euros. Negligence is always punishable, at half those amounts. Under article 87, insurers are obliged to keep an updated register of the actual, circumstantiated settlement times for the claims reported to them, in a form the supervisor prescribes. The data exists.

Article 45 also permits insurers and their associations to adopt codes of conduct, conventions or agreements that make settlement faster, provided they do not reduce the consumer protection the law guarantees. Insurers have to tell you whether they have signed up to one, who else has, and the rules that apply. Where a claim is handled by one insurer on another's behalf under such a convention, all the duties in this chapter fall on the one doing the handling. That is why, in a straightforward two-car collision, you may find your own insurer settling with you directly.

When the other driver has no insurance: the Fundo de Garantia Automóvel

The Fundo de Garantia Automóvel (Motor Guarantee Fund) is the system's backstop. Article 47 gives it administrative and financial autonomy and puts its management in the hands of the Autoridade de Supervisão de Seguros e Fundos de Pensões (ASF, the Insurance and Pension Funds Supervisory Authority). Article 48 covers accidents that happen in Portugal, caused by vehicles subject to compulsory insurance and habitually parked in Portugal or registered in countries outside the green-card arrangements, by vehicles with no plate or a plate that does not correspond to them, by vehicles exempt from the insurance duty because of the vehicle itself, and by vehicles withdrawn and prohibited from use.

Article 49 sets out what it actually pays, always up to the minimum compulsory sum insured:

• Bodily injury, where the vehicle was not identified, or where there was no valid and effective insurance.
• Material damage, where there was no valid and effective insurance.
• Material damage caused by an unidentified vehicle, but only where there is simultaneously a right to compensation for significant bodily injury.
• Bodily injury and material damage, where the vehicle was insured by a company subject to insolvency or liquidation proceedings.

"Significant bodily injury" is defined, and the definition is what decides whether a hit-and-run leaves you paying for your own bodywork. It means an injury causing death or hospital admission of seven days or more; or absolute temporary incapacity for a period of sixty days or more; or permanent partial incapacity of 15 percent or more. Below that threshold, an unidentified vehicle means the Fund does not cover the damage to your car.

Article 52 lists the exclusions. All the exclusions that apply to the compulsory insurance apply to the Fund too. On top of them, the Fund does not cover material damage suffered by people who were themselves in breach of the duty to insure; damage to passengers who voluntarily rode in the vehicle that caused the accident, where the Fund proves they knew it was uninsured; or damage suffered by someone who caused the accident deliberately, by the perpetrator, accomplice, handler or receiver in a robbery, theft or unauthorised taking of a vehicle involved in the accident, or by a passenger who knew the vehicle was illegitimately held and rode in it willingly.

Article 54 explains the sequel. Once the Fund has paid, it is subrogated to the injured party's rights, with legal default interest and the costs it incurred handling the claim. The keeper, the owner and the driver of the vehicle are jointly and severally liable to repay it, whichever of them carried the duty to insure. Anyone who contributed to the error or defect that made the policy void or voidable is subsidiarily liable, and so is a car dealer who failed to comply with the sale formalities relating to the insurance obligation.

Article 50 deals with the situation where the Fund and an insurer are in a founded dispute about which of them owes the money. The Fund pays the victim first and is reimbursed later if the insurer turns out to be liable, with legal default interest increased by a further 25 percent, a surcharge the insurer avoids by agreeing to reimburse without going to court. The Fund has to notify both the insurer and the claimants of the conflict within twenty working days of learning the accident occurred. The point of the article is that the argument between two institutions is not allowed to become your problem.

A short checklist

• Complete and sign a declaração amigável at the scene if you can. It halves every deadline the insurer is working to.
• Record the other vehicle's registration, the insurer and the policy number before anything else. Without the vehicle, the Fund only covers your bodywork if somebody was seriously hurt.
• Tell your own insurer within the period in your policy, or within eight days if the policy is silent.
• Expect first contact within two working days, or one if there is a declaração amigável.
• Expect a written acceptance or refusal of liability within thirty working days of that, or fifteen with a declaração amigável.
• If the answer is a refusal, it must be a reasoned reply addressing every point. A late one costs the insurer 200 euros a day, half of which is yours.
• If it is an offer, check it is a reasonable offer. An insufficient one carries double-rate interest on the shortfall.
• On a total loss, ask for all three disclosures: who valued the repair, the pre-accident market value, and the salvage estimate with the name of the buyer.
• Claim the replacement vehicle from the day liability is accepted. It is a right, not a courtesy.
• Once liability is accepted and your documents are in, payment is due within eight working days. After that the interest runs at double the legal rate.

Two further points of orientation. If the dispute is about money rather than about liability, and the sum is modest, the julgados de paz handle civil claims up to 15,000 euros for a fraction of the cost of a court. If cost is the obstacle to going anywhere at all, apoio judiciário is means-tested and covers a lawyer as well as the fees.

And if you were hurt at work, or on the way to or from it, a completely different and more generous regime sits on top of this one. The work accident regime covers the commute, has its own insurer and its own deadlines, and does not replace your claim against the driver who hit you.

Before any of that, the paperwork on your own vehicle has to be in order, because an insurer will check it. Road tax and the periodic inspection are the two things most often out of date, and a foreign licence that should have been exchanged is the third.

The system described here is unusually favourable to the injured party on paper: fixed deadlines, automatic interest at double the legal rate, a 200 euro daily penalty, a replacement car and a public guarantee fund. What converts paper into money is the calendar. Note the date of every communication, keep the declaração amigável, and count in working days.

Sources

This guide is written from official Portuguese and EU sources.

• Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa, Decreto-Lei n.º 291/2007, de 21 de agosto, sistema do seguro obrigatório de responsabilidade civil automóvel, consolidated text (Portuguese only)
• Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa, Decreto-Lei n.º 72/2008, de 16 de abril, Lei do Contrato de Seguro, consolidated text (Portuguese only)