A consortium of nine Portuguese law firms has filed a formal complaint with Portugal’s Ombudsman, the Provedoria de Justiça, on behalf of 1,260 Golden Visa investors who say the government’s revised nationality law has left them without protection, compounded by years of processing failures inside the country’s immigration agency.
The complaint, filed on June 26, 2026, adds institutional pressure to a legal campaign that has been building since December 2025, when the same group of firms filed an amicus curiae brief with Portugal’s Constitutional Court. A collective lawsuit against the Portuguese state is also underway.
What the New Nationality Law Changed
Portugal’s revised nationality law, Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026, was approved by Parliament on April 1, 2026, with a two-thirds majority, signed by President António José Seguro on May 3, 2026, and entered into force on May 19, 2026 following publication in the Diário da República.
The law doubles the standard residency requirement for naturalization. Most foreign nationals now need ten years of legal residence in Portugal before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship. Citizens of EU member states and Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) nations face a seven-year requirement. The previous threshold for all foreign nationals was five years.
Beyond the extended timeline, the law also changed how residency time is counted toward naturalization. Under the prior framework established by Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2024, the residency clock could begin from the date a temporary residence application was submitted to AIMA, provided the permit was eventually granted. Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 removes that provision entirely. The qualifying period now starts only from the date a residence permit is officially issued.
The law’s transitional protection is narrow. Nationality applications already submitted to the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN) on or before May 18, 2026 continue to be processed under the previous five-year regime. Investors who had not yet reached the nationality filing stage by that date receive no such protection.
Why the Processing Backlog Is Central to This Case
Portugal’s Golden Visa applications are legally required to be decided within 90 days. In practice, a significant number of investors have waited three to five years for their residence permits to be issued, with some applications dating back to 2021.
The sequencing problem this creates is at the heart of the Ombudsman complaint. An investor cannot file a nationality application without a valid, issued residence permit. Investors whose permits were delayed by AIMA could not file before the May 18 cutoff, and therefore fall outside the transitional protection under the new law, regardless of how long they have been waiting or how fully they complied with program requirements.
The consortium’s position is that investors who met every legal obligation, made qualifying investments, and paid all applicable fees should not lose years of residency credit because the government’s own agency failed to fulfill its legally mandated processing timelines. Had AIMA processed applications within the required 90-day window, many of these 1,260 investors would have qualified under the old five-year naturalization framework.
What the Ombudsman Can Do
The Provedor de Justiça is an independent constitutional body empowered to review complaints involving public administration conduct. It can investigate government agencies, request documents, and carry out unannounced inspections of public bodies without prior notice.
The Ombudsman cannot issue binding decisions or override legislation. However, it holds one power that makes this complaint strategically significant: it can refer matters to the Constitutional Court to assess the legality or constitutionality of a legal norm. For a consortium already pursuing a constitutional challenge through separate proceedings, that referral pathway is the primary objective of this submission.
The Government’s Position
Portugal’s government has not shown any willingness to retreat. Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro has argued publicly that investment migration consultants misled clients into expecting fast citizenship, a position the consortium has rejected outright.
“Before pointing fingers at consultants, the minister should answer one simple question: What happened to his promise that by 2026 all investors would have their residence cards?” said André Miranda, managing partner of Fieldfisher Portugal, referencing a commitment Leitão Amaro made to Parliament during the 2026 State Budget hearings.
The government has 90 days from May 18, 2026, to publish updated implementing regulations for the nationality law. As of this writing, neither AIMA nor the IRN has published procedural guidance, leaving thousands of pending applicants without clarity on how their cases will be handled.
What This Means for the Portugal Golden Visa
The Ombudsman complaint does not challenge the Golden Visa program itself. Portugal’s residency by investment route remains open and operational. The complaint is specifically about the nationality law changes and the government’s handling of processing delays, and how the two together have affected investors who planned their futures around a legal framework Portugal actively promoted for over a decade.
For existing investors, the legal proceedings now underway could determine whether residency time already accrued under the old framework will count toward the new citizenship clock. That question remains unanswered in the statute and has yet to receive formal guidance from AIMA or the government.
If domestic legal remedies are exhausted without resolution, the consortium has indicated it intends to pursue the matter before the European Court of Human Rights. Further legal actions are expected in the coming months.
