President sends veto to change of nationality for Sephardim

In a letter to the President of the Republic, Martins Castro called for a veto of the recent changes hastily approved by parliament. In fact, last night, the President of the Republic forwarded the project for analysis to the Constitutional Court.

Understand the importance of this movement:

In a final vote on the amendments to the Nationality Law on January 5, 2024, the Assembly of the Republic approved, among other measures, changes to the requirements for obtaining nationality through the Sephardic route. However, these changes go against Portuguese and European Union regulations and must be declared unconstitutional.

After being voted on and approved by the majority of deputies, the Law was sent for promulgation by the President of the Republic, who chose to request preventive inspection of its constitutionality. In other words, the President requested an opinion from the Supreme Court on possible unconstitutionalities in the bill.

This Court has 25 days to make its decision. If the Constitutional Court rules that these changes are unconstitutional, the President of the Republic is obliged to veto the law.

The President of the Republic must guarantee the application of the Constitution and, in this specific case, “the current President demonstrates that he has well-founded doubts about the constitutionality of the changes made, not only as a result of his functions, but also due to his great knowledge of constitutional matters”, explains Martins Castro jurist, author and researcher on nationality issues, Isabel Comte.

Next steps:

In normal times, this veto consists of not promulgating the changes and sending the diploma to the body that approved it, that is, the Assembly of the Republic, which must approve the diploma without this norm or change this norm so that it does not suffer from any further unconstitutionality.

This change will already have to be voted on by 2/3 of the deputies. However, as the Assembly of the Republic is dissolved, this would only be possible in the next legislature (after the elections) and after the Assembly of the Republic begins its functions again. In this scenario of new elections scheduled for March of this year, 2024, only with the new configuration of the Assembly of the Republic will it be possible to carry out a new analysis on the future of Portuguese nationality for the Sephardic community.

The estimate is that, if new rules are approved in parliament, they should only become applicable after a new regulation, which has taken an average of 20 months after the publication of a new law.

To find out the content of the letter, click here: Letter to the President of the Republic

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