The Portuguese Citizenship

Source: Wikipedia

According to the Oxford Dictionary, citizenship is “the position or status of being a citizen of a particular country”.

Taking this into account, we can easily come to the conclusion that the Portuguese citizenship is “the position or status” of being a citizen of Portugal.

But then we are led to others questions, which at first sight are not so easy to answer: who are the Portuguese citizens? Which is the criterion used to establish that someone is a Portuguese citizen? And to answer them, we have to go through some legal concepts.

International law scholars have realised that the countries use two basic rules to establish who their citizens are: jus soli or jus sanguinis.

Jus soli is a Latin expression that means “right of soil” and in accordance with this rule, someone is a citizen of a country because this person was born in its territory. For example: the USA considers all those who are born in the American territory as American citizens.

Now, jus sanguinis is a Latin expression that means “right of blood” and this rule says that someone will be considered a citizen of a country only if his/her parents are also citizens of such country. For example: someone who is child of a German parent, will be a German citizen, independently of the country he/she was born.

So, once explained the criteria for the establishment of citizenships, we go to the next question: which of these rules is adopted by Portugal?

Until 1981, under the terms of the previous Nationality Act (Law nº 2098/1959), Portugal used to adopt the rule of jus soli to establish citizenship, that is, all those born in the Portuguese territory were considered Portuguese citizens.

However, in 1981, with the new Nationality Act (Law nº 37/1981), Portugal started to adopt the jus sanguinis as main rule to establish the citizenship.

Therefore, I may roughly say that today the Portuguese citizens are those who have Portuguese blood and the exceptions to this rule we will see further on.

Larissa Bona

Observation: The Portuguese Citizenship is currently ruled by several legislations. The most relevant are: 

- The Portuguese Nationality Act (Law nº 37/1981, of 3^rd October);

- The Portuguese Nationality Statute (Decree-Law nº 237-A/2006, of 14^th December); 

- The Portuguese Civil Registration Code;

- European Convention on Nationality (Strasbourg, 6 XI 1997)

Tomorrow: The Portuguese Communities