Portugal Issued the EU's Second-Highest Number of Orders to Leave Between April and June, Yet Recorded Just 330 Returns
Eurostat counts 11,190 non-EU nationals told to leave Portugal in the second quarter, behind only France, but only 330 recorded returns, 40 of them forced. Brazilians and Angolans received almost half the orders.
Portugal told 11,190 non-EU nationals to leave the country between April and June, more than any EU member except France, according to figures Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, published on Wednesday. In the same three months, 330 people were recorded as actually returned from Portugal to a country outside the EU.
That is about three returns per hundred orders, against roughly one in three across the EU. Among the ten biggest issuers, none recorded a lower share: France returned about 12 people per hundred orders, Spain 23 and Germany more people than it ordered to leave in the quarter.
Where Portugal sits in the EU
Across the 27 member states, 110,335 non-EU nationals were ordered to leave in the second quarter, 12.0 percent fewer than a year earlier. France issued 32,420, Portugal 11,190 and Germany 8,160: Portugal alone accounted for about one in ten.
Returns tell a different story. EU countries returned 36,825 people to non-EU countries in the quarter, with Germany (8,400), France (3,825) and Poland (3,005) recording the most. Portugal's figure was 330: 40 forced returns and 290 assisted voluntary returns. Eurostat publishes all these figures rounded.
Portugal went against the EU trend: its count is about 25 percent above the 8,915 of a year earlier.
A series that jumped in 2025
Through 2024, Portugal issued between 45 and 315 orders to leave a quarter. From the second quarter of 2025 the numbers moved into the thousands: 8,915, then 1,140, 8,060, 7,625 and now 11,190.
The Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (AIMA, the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum) described the same break in its Relatório de Migrações e Asilo 2025 (Migration and Asylum Report), which we covered last week. AIMA and the police issued 23,133 notificações para abandono voluntário (notices to leave voluntarily) in 2025, which the report calls a "rupture" with the falling trend of earlier years. It links the rise to clearing pending cases and stronger enforcement. Such a notice normally gives 10 to 20 days to leave. (AIMA's annual count and Eurostat's quarterly one are compiled differently and do not match exactly.)
Who receives the orders
Of the 11,190 people ordered to leave Portugal in the second quarter, 3,510 were Brazilian and 2,000 Angolan. India (970), Cabo Verde (625), Bangladesh (590), São Tomé and Príncipe (490) and Guinea-Bissau (490) followed. Men received 6,775 of Portugal's orders and women 4,415.
Why so few returns are recorded
An order to leave is not the same as a removal. In Portugal most orders are notices to leave voluntarily: AIMA counted 23,133 of those in 2025, against 298 expulsion cases it opened before handing that work to the police. The returns data counts only departures the authorities record, so someone who leaves on their own without telling anyone may not appear in it. The 330 is best read as a floor, not a full count of who left.
Even so, forced removals from Portugal remain rare, at 40 in the quarter. Responsibility for them moved on 21 August 2025 from AIMA to the Unidade Nacional de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (National Foreigners and Borders Unit) of the PSP, the public security police. Its head said this month the country has 130 places to hold people it intends to remove, and that removals depend on the other country agreeing to take the person back. The new return and asylum law, in force since mid-September, postdates these figures.
Anyone who receives a notice they believe is wrong, for example while a residence application is pending, should seek legal advice promptly: the deadline is short.
