Portugal’s Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN) announced that, going forward, citizenship applications will be able to be done entirely online. This will be possible due to a new platform that will offer different functionalities and will count on automation and artificial intelligence. The aim is to reduce bottlenecks in the process and to increase the capacity of services by 50%.
Portugal Announces New Online Platform for Application of Citizenship Request
The possibility to start a citizenship request online in Portugal is not something entirely new as, in 2023, the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN) created an online path for submitting nationality applications. However, that option was only available for lawyers and solicitors, excluding the vast majority of applicants who would have preferred to do the procedure by themselves, since the processing of online application takes the same time as it does for those handing the documents personally, but with the associated costs of the chosen representative. However, this is about to change.
It was announced by IRN that a new platform is being launched, extending the online application option to anyone, in an effort to increase productivity and to speed up the process that will “allow the dematerialisation of operations associated with nationality processes, from the entry of the application and respective documents, analysis and final decision”, according to IRN. The institute states that, currently, the receiving and handling of paper documentation is the number one cause for inefficiency during the process of Portuguese nationality approval.
With Portuguese Citizenship in high demand, hundreds of thousands of applications have been submitted in the past few years, creating a backlog of processes to be handled. As a result, the waiting period has also increased by 6 to 12 months, from previews years. This new action is set to reduce the pressure on Institute of Registries and Notaries’s services and will even allow birth certificates to be automatically registered along with the granting of the nationality, since the platform is integrated with the civil registry system. From that point on, the new citizens can ask for their Portuguese passport which soon will have its validity extended to 10 years.
Also, even though the current process already has an online alternative for applicants to monitor the status of their request, the new platform will also bring this functionality, but with “with greater transparency and clarity”, as declared by Filomena Rosa, president of IRN.
All in all, the new platform is definitely good news for expats who after 5 years of living in Portugal can request their nationality and whom, from now on, should take less time to receive it. It is also yet another effort from the Portuguese Government to improve the bureaucratic part of immigrant's lives, and one that comes in line with Portugal’s mission to further digitalise its public services, which includes a set of measures presented by the Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro in mid-July.
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In 2023, almost 3.000 residency permits were granted under the Golden Visa programme, according to AIMA. That comes with no surprise since Portugal has some of the fastest pathways towards EU citizenship, which can be requested 5-6 years after the granting of residency by investment permits like the Golden Visa and the D2 Visa.
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