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Parliament has unanimously approved the hearing, proposed by the PCP, of the cultural association ‘Moinho da Juventude’ to obtain clarification on citizens born in Portugal who are unable to acquire Portuguese nationality.

 25 Jan 2023 ·

This request was approved by the parliamentary committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms, and Guarantees and had the favourable vote of all the parties present.

“We all know that there are citizens born in Portugal to parents who were already in Portugal at the time of birth and who live here, some reaching the age of 40 and something – I was able to meet one of these cases – who have no nationality. They have no nationality but neither do they have any documentation because their situation is completely irregular”, stressed the communist deputy Alma Rivera in the presentation of the text.

The PCP deputy said that these people “are in a situation of increased vulnerability” and that it is important “to understand why and what limits and what is preventing these situations from being circumvented”.

In the application, the communists state that “there is an incalculable number of citizens who were born in Portugal, but for the most varied reasons, including the fact that their parents were never able to regularize their families before their birth or that they did not have the capacity or way of gathering all the documentation that proves it, they are not recognized as Portuguese citizens”.

For the PS, deputy Pedro Delgado Alves welcomed the submission of the application and admitted that other entities may be heard on the subject.

“The work of extending [the nationality law], both in 2018 and 2020, was in the sense of trying to avoid as much as possible that these people end up in this situation of not having access to what, from the outset, is their nationality, which is often their original nationality. If we still have something to correct, I think it’s a good opportunity to do it now”, he defended.

Mónica Quintela, from the PSD, also welcomed the presentation of the application and stressed that “it is necessary to see gaps that will need to be filled” in this law.

The parliamentary leader of Chega, Pedro Pinto, and the deputy of the Liberal Initiative (IL) Patrícia Gilvaz also considered this hearing relevant.