António Leitão Amaro addressed the media after the Council of Ministers’ weekly meeting regarding the expected approval of the nationality law with the Chega party, following claims by the Socialist Party (PS) of a lack of consensus with the governing PSD/CDS-PP coalition.
“It seems that the PS’s stance is driven by a desire to repeat past mistakes in immigration policy,” he criticized.
The minister noted that socialist governments “enabled the entry of around one million people,” and now the PS seeks to “facilitate the entry and granting of nationality to another million individuals.”
“It often appears that the PS aims to complete the demographic and political reengineering it initiated,” he accused.
PS parliamentary leader Eurico Brilhante Dias highlighted a key disagreement: the repeal of a clause in the existing law safeguarding “the time elapsed since the residence authorization request” for deadline calculations.
The minister argued this point demonstrates that the PS previously misled citizens, asserting that by welcoming workers, they intended to ease nationality grants if their argument holds.
“When they claimed to open pathways for work, they actually aimed to ease nationality grants,” he said, noting the final global vote on the law is set for Tuesday.
Leitão Amaro dismissed constitutional concerns raised by the PS, indicating potential unconstitutionality if the government’s initial intent to retroactively apply the law from June 19—before its enactment—persisted.
“The proposed PSD and CDS law applies forward-looking only, thus governing future cases. Existing requests will comply with the current law,” he stated.
He argued that “attempting another approach harbors intentions to shape the future,” suggesting such PS motives may align with past efforts.
The PS proposed a compromise allowing “citizens to count elapsed time from when the state fails to meet response deadlines,” which was rejected.
“This represents a severe breach in Public Administration’s relationship with citizens, especially foreign ones, and such a paradigm shift would gravely impact wider public relations,” argued Eurico Brilhante Dias at a press conference.
