The new Government’s draft law was presented to the parliamentary committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms, and Guarantees at the beginning of last week, two days before the initially scheduled discussion date. Socialist deputy Pedro Delgado Alves requested time to review the proposal, which maintains the possibility of revoking citizenship for serious crimes while removing the initially planned retroactivity.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Liberal Initiative introduced an amendment advocating a general rule of ten years for obtaining Portuguese nationality, with a provision for seven years if the applicant meets stricter criteria. The Livre party called for greater protection for refugees and their children.
The proposal from the government-supporting benches provides for the equivalence of European and Portuguese-speaking citizens in accessing nationality and better frames the penalties for loss of citizenship to comply with the constitutional principle of proportionality.
The new measure allows access to Portuguese nationality for those legally residing in Portuguese territory for at least seven years in the case of nationals from Portuguese-speaking countries and EU member states, or ten years for nationals from other countries, according to the proposed amendments from the Government.
Regarding the ancillary sanction of loss of nationality, the Government and its supporting benches foresee the possibility of applying this measure to individuals “convicted of a prison sentence of five or more years” if naturalization was acquired less than ten years earlier.
The PSD included a proposal to amend the Penal Code to require the court to “consider” the accused’s “disregard” for the “constitutional order of values, the national community, and the integrity and security of the Portuguese state,” as well as their “degree of family and community integration,” and prevents the penalty from being applied on “political grounds.”
The debated proposal initially included a transitional regime that retroactively applied the law starting June 19, following the government’s argument that this measure was already part of their program and due to the significant volume of naturalization requests.
However, the alterations available in Parliament have dropped this requirement.
The option to revoke nationality only applies to individuals who maintain their original nationality.
Portuguese legislation does not allow for the creation of stateless individuals, so this sanction cannot be applied to cases from countries like India, China, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, where original nationality is revoked if another nationality is acquired.
