Following the Council of Ministers of 26th June 2024, and with the purpose to start implementing some of the policies announced three weeks ago with the approval of the “Migration Action Plan”, the Decree-Law no. 41-A/2024 of 28th June – which approves rules within the scope of the migration plan, assigning new powers to the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum, I. P., and reformulating the Migration Observatory, and extends the deadline established in Decree-Law no. 10-A/2020, of 13 March, regarding the validity of documents and visas – was published, with immediate effects on the day following its publication.
From the measures that are already in force, we can highlight the following:
- assigning the Agency for Integration, Migrations and Asylum (AIMA) the mission to proactively attract immigrants.
- assuming and valuing the Migration Observatory as an AIMA body; and
- extending for one year, until 30th June 2025, the validity of all documents and visas relating to stay in national territory (this is probably the most important measure in this Decree-Law, essential to everyone who has been, and continues to be, waiting to renew their cards since the beginning of this year).
Besides the measures published in the mentioned Decree-Law, It was also approved the Council of Ministers a Resolution which creates something called “Special Mission Unit for the Recovery of Pending Processes at AIMA”, which will be responsible for analyzing and deciding pending processes and which will operate until 2nd June 2025.
According to such resolution, around 300 people shall be hired and fully dedicated to administrative processing of pending processes and assistance to applicants, in order to try to finally solve the huge backlog and considerable delays from the immigration office.
We hope that all these measures can solve some of the issues that unfortunately the immigration office of Portugal is having for several years already, and that, most importantly, investors/clients/applicants can see improvements and proper solutions to their respective situations.
We remain available for any further clarification.
For more information, contact our team:
Gustavo Machado Dias
Associate
