The Nationality Law Is on Seguro's Desk — Sign, Veto, or Send It Back to the Constitutional Court?
Parliament passed the nationality law 152-64 on 1 April, doubling the residency requirement from five to ten years. The decree now sits with President Seguro. He can sign it, veto it, or refer it to the Constitutional Court. Each path carries political risk.
The decree that will reshape who can become Portuguese sits on the president's desk at Belém Palace, and António José Seguro is in no hurry to pick up his pen.
On 1 April, Parliament voted 152-64 to approve the most significant overhaul of Portugal's nationality law in a generation. The bill doubles the residency requirement for citizenship from five to ten years for most applicants, tightens jus soli provisions for children born on Portuguese soil, and introduces a civic knowledge test — all without a single transitional protection for the tens of thousands of applications already in the pipeline.
What the Law Changes
The headline provision is the residency increase: from five to ten years of legal residence before an applicant can apply for Portuguese citizenship. Citizens of CPLP countries — Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and the other Portuguese-speaking nations — get a shorter path at seven years, while EU nationals also qualify at seven.
But the details matter as much as the headline. Children born in Portugal to foreign parents will now need five years of legal parental residency to acquire nationality at birth — a sharp departure from the more permissive regime that had been in place since 2018. Anyone convicted of a crime carrying a prison sentence of more than three years will be automatically barred from acquiring citizenship.
A new civic knowledge test will require applicants to demonstrate familiarity with Portuguese history, culture, and civic duties — the exact format and content of which have yet to be defined by the government. Language requirements remain, but the civic component adds a second hurdle that did not previously exist.
The PSD-Chega Deal
The law's passage was secured through a last-minute agreement between the governing PSD and the radical-right Chega, sidelining the Socialist Party and its allies. The deal gave PSD the two-thirds majority it needed — 152 votes — while Chega extracted the exclusion of transitional protections, meaning that applicants who filed under the old five-year rule will not be grandfathered in.
The absence of transitional provisions is the most legally contentious element. Immigration lawyers have already warned that thousands of pending applications — many filed years ago and stuck in AIMA's well-documented backlog — could be voided overnight when the law takes effect. The practical effect is that applicants who have been legally resident for six, seven, or eight years and expected to qualify under the old rules may now have to wait years longer.
Seguro's Three Options
The President of the Republic has three paths:
1. Promulgate. Sign the decree and allow it to enter into force. This would be the path of least institutional friction but would put a former Socialist leader's signature on a law his party voted against — a symbolically uncomfortable position.
2. Veto. Send it back to Parliament with a reasoned objection. This is a political veto, not a constitutional one. Parliament can override it with an absolute majority of all deputies — 116 of 230 — which the PSD-Chega coalition can easily muster. A veto would delay but not block the law, and it would signal presidential disapproval without changing the outcome.
3. Refer to the Constitutional Court. Ask the Court to review the decree's constitutionality before promulgation. The Court struck down elements of an earlier version in November 2025, and lawyers have identified the lack of transitional protections as a potential constitutional weakness. A referral would buy months of time and could result in specific provisions being invalidated — but it would also set Seguro on a collision course with the parliamentary majority.
Why It Matters
Portugal granted citizenship to over 180,000 people between 2018 and 2024 under the five-year regime, making it one of the most accessible paths to EU citizenship anywhere on the continent. The Brazilian community alone accounts for the largest share of naturalisations, and the law's passage has already triggered uncertainty among the estimated 400,000 Brazilian nationals living in Portugal.
For the expat community more broadly — including the growing number of American, British, and South African residents who relocated under Golden Visa, D7, and digital nomad programmes — the new rules represent a fundamental change in the proposition that brought many of them to Portugal in the first place.
The President has given no public indication of his timeline. The decree carries no statutory deadline for promulgation, and Seguro's silence has been interpreted by both sides as either deliberation or delay. What is certain is that the decision, when it comes, will define the early character of his presidency.
