Portugal Moves To Online Golden Visa Renewals
On January 19th, 2023, the Portuguese Government implemented a process of online renewals for the Golden Visa Program. This is an exceptional measure of the utmost importance for all applicants with expired cards since 2020, allowing them to move quickly to benefit from this simplified procedure which is entirely done electronically. Such renewals were, until now, done in person subject to an appointment before the Immigration Services (SEF), in Portugal. However, the backlog that the Immigration Office has been facing due to the restrictions caused by the pandemic and SEF restructuring, resulted in the services having to include the Golden Visa program in the automatic procedure to deal with more than 19 000 pending renewals. At the same time, SEF is more available for concession processes and scheduling of the biometrics appointments.
Prime Legal submitted all renewal applications on the day this option became available and started to receive the residency cards as of yesterday, February 7th, 2023, confirming that this new mechanism is in fact working efficiently. These are very exciting news for the program and its reputation!
EQTY Capital is equally excited about this news, as this new procedure will provide greater confidence in the Golden Visa process for current EQTY Fund investors and potential ones alike. We believe this decision also reinforces that the Program is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Vanessa Rodrigues Lima
Founder at VRL Legal & Prime Legal