Guides
Using a Loja do Cidadão in Portugal
How to visit a Loja do Cidadão: booking online, taking a queue ticket on your phone or at the kiosk, what to bring, and what you can do online instead.
The Portugal Brief
News
Portugal Picks 1 January 2027 to Pull the Ultra-Thin Plastic Bags Off the Supermarket Produce Counter — TERRA+ Strategy Routes the Substitution Through APED Without a New Tax
The Environment Minister has picked substitution over a tax. Reusable nets and recycled-textile bags replace transparent ultra-light produce bags from 1 January 2027, with the transition run through APED inside the TERRA+ programme.
News
Parliament's Blackout Inquiry Wants 72 Hours of Backup Power for Hospitals, Pharmacies and Food Retail — and Recommends Lifting the 500-Litre Fuel-Storage Cap to 3,000 Litres
PSD rapporteur Paulo Moniz's draft report on the April 2025 Iberian blackout proposes 72-hour backup-power autonomy at hospitals, 24 hours elsewhere, the reclassification of supermarkets and pharmacies as critical infrastructure, and a fuel-storage cap raised from 500 to 3,000 litres.
Housing
IHRU Demands a 12-Month Lease for Porta 65 Jovem — But the Law Says No Such Thing, and Lawyers Tell Público the Institute Is Blocking Eligible Renters Without Legal Basis
The Habitação Institute is rejecting Porta 65 Jovem applicants whose rental contracts do not run a full 12 months from the moment the subsidy starts. The legislation governing the programme imposes no minimum contract length, and jurists are telling Público the requirement has no legal foundation.
State Real Estate
Lisbon Sells Its Berlin Embassy Plot to the Friedrich Ebert Foundation for €22 Million — 18% Above Valuation, the State's Biggest Property Sale in a Decade
ESTAMO closed the Tiergarten plot at Hiroshimastrasse 25 and Hildebrandstrasse 10 to the SPD-linked Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 2025. Bought 30 years ago for an embassy that was never built, it accounted for almost the entire €22.24 million the State raised from real-estate sales last year.
Foreign Policy
Maria Corina Machado Took the Venezuelan Question to São Bento on Wednesday — Paulo Rangel Pledges Continued Backing for the Diaspora as Foro Penal Counts 477 Political Prisoners
Venezuela's Nobel-laureate opposition leader closed her European tour in Lisbon on 23 April with a meeting at Paulo Rangel's office. Machado is locking in southern-EU backing for the political-prisoner releases the interim government has only partially delivered.
Defence
Three Allied Carrier Groups Just Sailed Together Under a NATO Command Headquartered Outside the Capital — Inside Neptune Strike 26-1, the Mediterranean Drill STRIKFORNATO Steered for the Alliance
STRIKFORNATO at Oeiras steered Spain's Juan Carlos I, Italy's Cavour and France's Charles de Gaulle through a Mediterranean and Black Sea exercise from 25 March to 1 April. SACEUR Alexus Grynkewich made his first Portuguese visit during the drill.