Portugal Golden Visa Quietly Reopens to Russians Following Hundreds of Lawsuits

This story first appeared in IMI’s Q2 2024 Private Briefing, accessible to IMI Pro members.

The Portuguese Golden Visa program has inconspicuously reopened to Russian and Belarusian applicants, who had been subject to a ban since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. Unlike the widely publicized exclusion, the readmission has taken place entirely in the absence of any public announcements.

“Russians and Belarusians were never legally banned from the program,” explains Madalena Monteiro of Lisbon-based Liberty Legal. “The story began after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when Internal Affairs Minister Augusto Santos Silva announced during an interview that golden visas were suspended for Russians and Belarusians.”

She points out that Portuguese lawmakers never passed any legislation to formally suspend those nationalities from the program. “What we were seeing was simply that applications from Russians were set aside.”

In other words, they were simply not processed. Not rejected outright, but not approved either, despite their turn in the queue arriving and passing.

Monteiro, who has successfully sued Portuguese immigration authorities on behalf of Russian and Belarusian clients more than 170 times in the last two years, says the government’s unofficial ban is what made her spring into action. 

“In late 2022, I decided to submit the so-called Subpoenas for the Protection of Rights, Freedoms, and Guarantees,” she says. “This is a special court procedure I brought against the authorities based on the fact that this informal suspension is a violation of fundamental rights in the constitution, such as the right of human dignity, right of legal safety, right not to be discriminated against because of your nationality, and so on.”

In the responses she initially received during those court proceedings, Portuguese immigration authority SEF (and, later, AIMA) pointed to a recommendation from the European Commission that urged the suspension of Russian and Belarusian nationals named on sanctions lists.

“However,” Monteiro comments, “in those same responses, AIMA stated that they had decided ‘by superior orientation’ to suspend the applications of all Russian and Belarusian nationals, regardless of whether or not they were sanctioned. The judges in my cases asked SEF/AIMA many times to define what it meant by ‘superior orientation’ but never received a response.”

Time and again, the judges invariably and predictably ruled in favor of the Russian and Belarusian applicants. According to Monteiro, there were several reasons why these filings turned into open-and-shut cases:

1. There was no formal legislation defining the suspension, violating the principle of legality;
2. The recommendation from the European Commission was simply that; a recommendation, and not a law or regulation, which leaves the member states free to decide whether to adopt it. A recommendation is not a source of law;
3. Even if the recommendation were adopted, there would still be no legal basis to suspend Russians and Belarusians qua Russians and Belarusians, in the absence of any sanctions; and
4. Even if such a law were to be approved, it would in itself represent a clear violation of the principles of non-discrimination based on nationality, as set out in the Portuguese constitution.

Now, Monteiro remarks, “we have a lifting of the suspension. But again, there is nothing official about that either. There has been no internal communiqué at AIMA about this. Nonetheless, I have started to see several processes that have been on hold for years suddenly start to move again.”

She says several Russian clients have been able to schedule their biometric appointments without any legal intervention or court procedures.

“I have one specific case in which the client had been waiting for more than six months for the residency card to be issued. Finally, one day, just after rumors that the suspension had been lifted started circulating, his process was sent to Casa da Moeda, the entity responsible for producing the cards.”

What SEF and AIMA did to Russian and Belarusian applicants was clearly illegal (as demonstrated by more than 170 lost court cases), and they were obviously aware of it. Government ministers responsible for the illegal suspension were clearly hoping to remain in the EU’s good graces. 

For the same reason, now that the ban is lifted, most practitioners following the matter don’t expect any major public announcements to confirm the reopening.

At least two other investment migration professionals with Russian clients have corroborated Monteiro’s observations.

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