Valuing Portuguese nationality is a legitimate choice. Honouring the trust of those who believed in Portugal is a constitutional duty.
“Can we trust Portugal?”
Over the past fifteen years I have worked with hundreds of families who chose Portugal to invest, work, start businesses or educate their children, and I have heard this question countless times. It was never the first question of the meeting, but it was almost always the most important one.
Over time, I came to understand that what drives clients forward is not the investment, nor the timeline to nationality. The decision was always about trust - in the country and in its people.
And that says a great deal about Portugal: its geographic position, its stability, its history and the values that have made the country a rare place. At a time when predictability is scarce, trust is perhaps the greatest strategic asset Portugal has to offer.
The recent changes to the Nationality Law therefore deserve careful reflection. Portugal does not merely have the right to value its nationality - it has the duty to do so. Citizenship should represent a genuine connection to the country and its values, not simply the automatic consequence of an investment.
We can debate the timing, the form or the impact of the measures. It is legitimate to question the absence of political protection for those who trusted the rules in force. But this adjustment is not meant to restrict access to Portugal: it reaffirms the value of belonging to this unique community.
States do not live by their laws alone. They live by the balance of their institutions, by security, by quality of life and, above all, by commitment. Those who began their journey toward nationality organised their lives around trust in the State's legal framework, and it is in moments like these that the maturity of a State governed by the rule of law is measured.
That was clearly not the political strategy followed, and so it falls to us, as lawyers, to defend those who believed and expect an outcome - not through mass, strident proceedings, which are unlikely to be the solution and whose noise does more harm than good, but case by case, through a sound and sustained strategy, built around the specific situation of each client and each family, whenever we find constitutional grounds to protect their legitimate expectations.
That is where the rule of law must prove itself worthy of the trust placed in the country.
Over these years, I have never felt that clients invested in order to acquire citizenship. Without exception, all of them chose Portugal because they believed in the country, in its roots and its people, and because they know that Portugal has historically always built bridges with every culture. Citizenship emerged simply as the natural recognition of that choice.
The true measure of the success of the changes to the Nationality Law does not lie in the number of years added to the path to nationality, but in the ability to value what it means to be Portuguese - turning that status into a conscious choice, not merely the consequence of a time count - while keeping unshaken the premise that it remains a natural choice for those seeking stability, freedom and a better future for their family.
Because investors can choose any country. But families choose the one where they imagine building a life. If we are able to preserve that trust, Portugal will continue to deserve to be chosen. And Portuguese citizenship will continue to be the natural recognition of a genuine sense of belonging.
Gonçalo Mendes Leal
Founding Partner at NSM Lawyers