The two parties in Portugal’s minority government have proposed rewriting which investments qualify for the Portugal Golden Visa, tightening the popular fund route and opening a €250,000 (approximately $288,000) path through social care projects.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD) and CDS-People’s Party (CDS-PP) filed the proposal on November 6, the deadline for amendments to the 2027 State Budget bill.
Together, they hold 91 of parliament’s 230 seats, short of the 116 needed for a majority, so the amendment cannot pass on their votes alone.
Twenty-one deputies signed it, led by PSD’s Hugo Soares and CDS-PP’s Paulo Núncio. It now awaits a committee vote.
Madalena Monteiro, founder of Liberty, says that “PSD alone cannot pass this law, so we will need to wait and see.”
Stricter Rules for Funds
Today, an investor qualifies by placing €500,000 (approximately $576,000) in a Portuguese non-real-estate fund that invests at least 60% in companies headquartered in Portugal. The amendment lifts that floor to 80% and adds a condition: the money must arrive “through the reinforcement of the share capital” of those companies.
Reinforcing a company’s share capital means giving it new money in exchange for newly issued shares. Buying existing shares on the stock exchange is different: the cash goes to the previous owner, and the company receives no new money.
The text doesn’t mention open-ended funds. As drafted, however, shares or bonds bought on the market would no longer appear to count toward the quota, a problem for funds built on listed securities.
In their explanatory note, the two parties argue that fund investment should “contribute, in fact, to the capitalization of companies.”
Jordi Vilanova of Mercan Group, which manages golden visa funds, reads the intent the same way: fund capital “should help strengthen Portuguese companies.” Closed-ended funds, he says, “tend to be closer to that model than open-ended funds, which typically need to keep part of their portfolio liquid.”
The practical detail is still open, he adds, and there is “room to discuss with the Government how this is best applied.”
A New Social Route and Cheaper Research
A new route would accept €250,000 for building or restoring social care facilities for children, young people, the elderly, and people with disabilities, or facilities that integrate resident foreigners and beneficiaries of international protection.
Investors would channel the money through a closed list of public bodies, public-utility foundations, misericórdias, and similar institutions.
Research donations get cheaper: that minimum would fall from €500,000 to €250,000.
Pending applicants are grandfathered. Still, if the changes took effect with the budget on January 1, “that would be quite a short window,” Vilanova says, arguing that “a transition period would be important for investors and for the market as a whole.”
“Months of Rumors”
PSD holds 89 seats and CDS-PP two. When the budget cleared its first vote on October 28, it did so because the Socialist Party (PS), with 58 seats, abstained, while Chega, with 60, voted against.
A repeat PS abstention would carry the amendment on the governing parties’ votes alone.
Chega has not been hostile to the program before: in 2022, it voted against abolishing golden visas and proposed widening them. PS, meanwhile, has filed its own amendment to scrap the Tax Incentive for Scientific Research and Innovation (IFICI) and commission a study of the golden visa’s effects.
Monteiro sees the proposal as confirmation of “the rumors” circulating in recent months. The government had signaled as much: it floated a social-investment route in its 2024 migration plan, and Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro said last year that it was studying changes to the program.
While “it’s difficult to tell right now if this is going to pass,” she suggests the opposition has reason to back it, as the new wording “aligns with other parties’ overall political views and goals” more closely than the current law does.
Werner Gruner of Get Golden Visa stresses that the proposal “requires further clarification and is likely to undergo amendments before final approval.”
Committee votes on budget amendments run from November 18 to 23. Parliament holds its final vote on the full budget on November 24.
