Council of Ministers Approves a Bill Creating a National Anti-Trafficking Coordinator and Carving Out Non-Punishment for Trafficking Victims — Lisbon Transposes EU Directive 2024/1712 Onto a 355-Registo OTSH Caseload

The Council of Ministers approved a Government bill on Wednesday 3 June 2026 that transposes Directive (UE) 2024/1712 of the European Parliament and Council on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting victims, sending the proposal to the Assembleia da República for the next legislative phase. The Ministry of Justice (Ministério da Justiça), led by Rita Alarcão Júdice, sponsored the package, which pairs a Penal Code (Código Penal) amendment with a structural redesign of Portugal's anti-trafficking coordination architecture.

National anti-trafficking coordinator replaces the current rapporteur seat

The bill creates a Coordenador Nacional Anti-Tráfico de Seres Humanos (National Anti-Human-Trafficking Coordinator) to replace the existing relator nacional (national rapporteur) function. The new figure will be designated by the member of Government responsible for the area of cidadania e igualdade (citizenship and equality), and the mandate explicitly covers promoting and coordinating anti-trafficking programmes, monitoring phenomenon trends and the results of implemented measures, and centralising statistical collection across the implicated state services. Data collection runs in coordination with the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality (Comissão para a Cidadania e Igualdade de Género — CIG), the Human Trafficking Observatory (Observatório do Tráfico de Seres Humanos — OTSH) and the victim-support network — the existing institutional layer is preserved, but the rapporteur-to-coordinator switch concentrates operational authority that the prior structure spread across reporting and consultation roles.

Penal Code carve-out: non-punishment of victims for crimes committed under exploitation

The Penal Code amendment is the load-bearing reform. The Government proposes adding an article that ensures non-punishment of trafficking victims who commit illegal acts as a direct consequence of being subjected to one of the exploitation situations set out in the trafficking definition. The list of qualifying acts runs from administrative-side offences — illegal immigration, document falsification (falsificação de documentos), violations of labour-law obligations — up through more serious crimes including theft (furto) and drug trafficking (tráfico de estupefacientes) where directly caused by the victimisation. The Ministry of Justice framing is that the carve-out aims to encourage trafficking victims to come forward and report the crime or seek support and assistance, removing the legal barrier that otherwise pushes victims away from the criminal-justice system when their own conduct under coercion could be charged.

The 355-record OTSH baseline frames the policy ask

The OTSH 2024 annual report registered 355 records of presumed trafficking situations, against the previous year's 650 (the highest figure since 2019). Labour exploration accounts for 76% of signalled cases — presumed victims of labour-trafficking are 85% male, 99% adult, and 86% foreign-national, with Indian nationals at 31% leading the cohort. Sexual exploitation runs as the second typology, with predominantly female, adult, and foreign-national presumed victims. The Annual Internal Security Report (RASI/2024) records 43 arguidos (formal suspects) for this crime — 13 more than 2023 — and 12 detentions. The V National Plan for the Prevention and Combat of Trafficking in Human Beings, covering 2025-2027, is the live multi-year operating frame; the new coordinator role inherits the implementation lead on this cycle.

Companion bill on electronic evidence threads through the same Council sitting

The Council of Ministers also approved a parallel proposta de lei on electronic evidence (prova electrónica) in criminal proceedings, framing the move on the working baseline that approximately 85% of EU criminal investigations rely on digital data. The pairing follows the 21 May Council of Ministers transposition of EU Directive 2023/1544 on access, preservation and obtaining of electronic evidence — Wednesday's sitting completes a second leg in the same digital-evidence chain. The Justice ministry framing positions the two pieces as a single law-enforcement-capacity reform tape and a step in reducing impunity on digital-trail-only cases.

What the bill changes from the prior rapporteur structure

The relator nacional model, derived from the EU member-state architecture under Directive 2011/36/UE (the predecessor instrument), gave Portugal a designated reporting officer tied to international-comparison feedback and ad-hoc inter-ministry calls. The coordenador upgrade differs on three lines: (a) statistical centralisation — the new figure absorbs the data-collection function rather than receiving it from OTSH for external reporting; (b) operational programming authority — the coordinator runs and coordinates the anti-trafficking programmes themselves, where the rapporteur had a more observational mandate; (c) cross-border focal-point clarity — CIG remains the cross-border victim-referral focal point, but the new coordinator becomes the centralised counterparty for the OTSH-CIG-IOM (International Organization for Migration) victim-support-network operational layer.

Parliamentary path

The bill enters parliamentary discussion under the standard generalidade-specialidade sequence — the generalidade vote schedules first, after which the proposal moves to the relevant specialised commission (Comissão de Assuntos Constitucionais, Direitos, Liberdades e Garantias for Penal Code provisions; Comissão de Direitos, Liberdades e Garantias on the coordinator-structure side) for article-by-article work. The Government framing positions the dual transposition as time-critical — the Directive 2024/1712 transposition deadline runs through 15 July 2026 under the standard 24-month window, and the package must reach Diário da República promulgation ahead of that cutoff.

What this means for residents and expats in Portugal

The bill is institutional in tone but practical at the household and employer level. Foreign-national workers — particularly in agriculture, construction, hospitality and domestic-service contracts on the Indian-Pakistani-Bangladeshi cohort flagged in the OTSH data — gain the most concrete protection layer: the non-punishment carve-out means victims forced into document-irregularity status, illegal work or downstream petty offences under coercion can come forward and request help without facing the immigration-side or criminal-side consequences that would otherwise trap them in the trafficking loop. Domestic-service employers operating under the Decreto-Lei 235/92 contract regime — including expat households with full-time live-in housekeepers, cooks, drivers and carers — should treat the coordinator-CIG-OTSH triangle as the live referral lane if there is any concern about the working conditions of a contracted worker or an applicant. Construction-site and agricultural-operator employers should similarly route any concern raised about a third-party subcontractor's recruitment chain into the same channel — the Authority for Working Conditions (Autoridade para as Condições do Trabalho — ACT) inspection lane remains the parallel enforcement route. The Council of Europe's GRETA evaluation framework will track Portugal's implementation post-transposition, and the next country round will benchmark the coordinator function against the 2024/1712-mandated minimum competencies — the institutional lift announced on 3 June starts the clock on that international peer review.