During a press conference at the Assembly of the Republic, the vice-president of the PS bench, Pedro Delgado Alves, stated that this decree, which amends the Penal Code to include the loss of nationality as an accessory penalty, “must take the form of an organic law, in accordance with Article 164, paragraph f), and Article 166 of the Constitution”.
These constitutional articles stipulate that legislative initiatives regarding “the acquisition, loss and reacquisition of Portuguese citizenship”, among other matters, must take the form of organic laws, requiring an absolute majority of active deputies for approval.
Pedro Delgado Alves asserted that the decree in question, originating from a government proposal, “was always assumed” to be an organic law, as indicated in the bill presented by PSD and CDS-PP, affirming that “therefore, this doubt does not exist”.
According to the deputy, “there was merely a writing lapse in the preparation of the final decree, in which three or four words were missing from the preamble: the Assembly of the Republic decrees the following organic law”.
“But this was detected last week. We filed a complaint regarding the inaccuracies, and the text was immediately corrected and sent to Belém as an organic law,” he reported.
The decree in question originated from the government’s proposal to amend the Nationality Law and was subsequently developed into a joint bill by PSD and CDS-PP, who justified this choice due to constitutional concerns about the matter.
In the justification for their bill, PSD and CDS-PP noted that “transferring the accessory penalty of the loss of nationality to the Penal Code”, even without the corresponding amendment to the Nationality Law, “obviously does not exempt the need to follow the legislative procedure and the heightened approval majority required for organic laws (Article 166, paragraph 2 of the Constitution)”.
After the final wording was established, PS submitted a “complaint against inaccuracy” of the decree on November 10, to ensure it included the term organic law.
In an order dated the following day, the president of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, indicated that upon reviewing the text, a “lapse in the initial form, due to the omission of the expression ‘organic law'” was identified, and he granted the complaint submitted by PS.
The decree was then sent to the President of the Republic with the indication of organic law, as well as the decree revising the Nationality Law.
As organic laws, within eight days of receiving the decrees, not only the President of the Republic but also the prime minister and one-fifth of the deputies – 46 out of 230 – can request preventive examination of any of their norms, under the Constitution, a right that PS chose to exercise.
The decree amending the Nationality Law and another that provides for the loss of nationality as an accessory penalty, both originating from a PSD/CDS-PP government proposal, were approved on October 28 with 157 votes in favor from PSD, Chega, IL, CDS-PP, and JPP, and 64 votes against from PS, Livre, PCP, BE, and PAN, and were sent to the Palace of Belém on November 11.
The Constitution establishes that legislative initiatives concerning “the acquisition, loss, and reacquisition of Portuguese citizenship”.
The majority with which these two decrees were approved, over two-thirds of the deputies, allows for their possible confirmation even if unconstitutionality is declared by the Constitutional Court.
