Government Names César Teixeira to Lead AIMA, Saying the Backlog Phase Is Over and Integration Comes Next

César Teixeira, a member of the board of the Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (AIMA, the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum), will take over as its president this year, replacing Pedro Portugal Gaspar. The Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, announced the change on Wednesday 7 October at a hearing of Parliament's Comissão de Assuntos Constitucionais, Direitos, Liberdades e Garantias (Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees), and called it "evolution within continuity".

He told MPs that the first phase of the government's migration policy is over and that the next priorities are integration and action against illegal immigration and the networks behind it, according to the Lusa news agency report carried by Observador.

Why the president is changing

The minister praised Mr Gaspar, saying the two had reviewed the "first phase" together, a period that covered clearing the backlog and changing the law. "We reached the joint conclusion that the results were very positive," he said, but "a new phase is needed in which the priorities are different", ECO reported. "The decision was an evolution within continuity," he added, and "this year there will be a new president, who is a current member of the board, César Teixeira."

Asked by Vanessa Barata of Chega about reports that Mr Gaspar was heading to the Autoridade da Concorrência (Competition Authority), the minister said the government was counting on him "for other functions", but that it "will not necessarily be" what the MP had described. We reported in September that Mr Gaspar was due before a parliamentary committee as the government's pick for a seat on the competition regulator's board.

Mr Teixeira has sat on AIMA's board since July 2024, when the government named him alongside Mr Gaspar and three other members, all with a favourable opinion from the Comissão de Recrutamento e Seleção para a Administração Pública (CReSAP, the Public Administration Recruitment and Selection Commission), according to the government's communiqué of 23 July 2024. He holds a law degree from the University of Lisbon, practised as a lawyer and has been a Social Democratic Party (PSD) member of the Guimarães municipal assembly since 2021, Notícias ao Minuto reported. Apart from Mr Gaspar, he is the only member of the 2024 board still in office.

The change has been announced, not yet formalised. By the time of writing we had found no Council of Ministers decision or Diário da República (official gazette) notice appointing him, and the minister gave no start date beyond "this year".

The figures the minister gave

Mr Leitão Amaro set out the government's own figures on the state of AIMA's work. All are his, as reported by Lusa:

• Backlog: of 940,000 notifications handled by AIMA's Estrutura de Missão (Mission Structure, the unit set up to clear pending cases), 98 percent have been resolved, he said. Of 445,000 pending manifestações de interesse (expressions of interest, the old route that let people regularise after entering on a tourist visa), about 5,000 cases are left.
• Regulated-migration protocol: 12,000 visas granted from 21,600 applications, with an average decision time of 20 days, and 10 percent refused.
• Family reunification: 55,000 appointments booked in 2026 and 26,000 residence permits granted, above a historical average he put at under 20,000.
• Asylum: 800 applications so far this year, against 2,700 in 2023.
• Staff: AIMA has grown from 723 employees to 850, and its cultural mediators from 123 to 325.

He also highlighted a new national integration plan, which has been promised for months and has not yet been published, and asked Parliament to correct procedural points in the statelessness law passed this summer, saying the government had detected signs of organised attempts to abuse it.

The union's response

The Sindicato dos Técnicos de Migração (STM, the Migration Technicians' Union), whose members struck nationwide on Tuesday, congratulated Mr Teixeira but warned that the change "does not replace answers, does not erase problems". In a statement reported by Observador, it listed "chaotic processes, absence of planning, exhausted workers" among its complaints. "A new president is not a blank cheque," its president, Manuela Niza Ribeiro, said in the statement, quoted by ECO.

The union repeated its demands: a career of its own for migration technicians, a pay supplement equivalent to the one paid to the Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR, the National Republican Guard) and the Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP, the Public Security Police), an end to precarious contracts for cultural mediators, and leadership with experience in migration.

What it means if your case is pending

The minister did not announce any change to how pending applications are handled, and he presented the new president as continuity. If you are among the roughly 5,000 expressions of interest he said are still open, or waiting on a family reunification decision, nothing announced on Wednesday alters the process you are in. Mr Gaspar is still in post for now.

The figures above are the government's own count, not an independent audit, and lawyers have questioned how many family reunification bookings end in a card; we looked at that gap in August. For how the process itself works, see our family reunification guide.