Constitutional Court declares amendments to the Nationality Law unconstitutional and rejects the loss of nationality

The Constitutional Court ruled that several provisions of Decree No. 17/XVII of the Assembly of the Republic, which intended to amend Law No. 37/81 (the “Nationality Law”), are unconstitutional.

Accordingly, the declaration of unconstitutionality issued followed by the preventive constitutional review requested by 50 Members of Parliament prevents the promulgation of the aforementioned decree.

In summary, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the following provisions that would have been incorporated into the Nationality Law:

• The impossibility of acquiring Portuguese nationality for individuals who have been convicted, by a final and binding judgment, to a prison sentence of two years or more, for a crime punishable under Portuguese law;
• The refusal of the acquisition of Portuguese nationality on the grounds that the individual demonstrates conduct rejecting adherence to the national community, its representative institutions, and national symbols;
• The temporal application regime, namely the requirement that the legal requirements be fulfilled at the date of submission of the application for the attribution or acquisition of Portuguese nationality, as well as the attribution of an interpretative nature to those provisions.

On the other hand, the Constitutional Court did not rule on the unconstitutionality of the remaining provisions covered by the request, in particular those relating to the revoke of the rule allowing, for the purpose of calculating periods of lawful residence, the inclusion of the time elapsed since the submission of an application for a residence permit, provided that such permit was subsequently granted.

The Constitutional Court also ruled unconstitutional, being in opposition to the principles of equality, proportionality and culpability, the amendments to the Criminal Code that provided for the penalty of loss of nationality to be imposed on individuals sentenced to an effective prison term of four years or more.

For more information, please contact Inês Hassane Borges at ihb@ccsllegal.com

[Photo by: José Martín Ramírez Carrasco, available at unsplash.com]