What the Minister Actually Pledged
On 1 April 2026, the same day the Portuguese Parliament approved the revised nationality law, António Leitão Amaro, Portugal's Minister of the Presidency, gave a public statement on what the government identifies as the next phase of AIMA's backlog reduction work. As reported by IMI Daily, the Minister said in direct terms: "Next year we will resolve the outstanding issues that, for reasons of social equity, we left until the end, which are those that pay the most, the 'golden visas'." The framing explicitly positions Golden Visa files as administratively deprioritised on grounds of social equity — a framing that has not previously been articulated at ministerial level in such direct terms.
The Minister also described the broader regularisation effort, of which the Golden Visa backlog resolution is now pledged to be the final phase, as "the biggest regularization operation" Portugal has undertaken. The administrative context is relevant. AIMA's principal operational focus in 2024 and 2025 was the clearance of the large cohort of regularisation files from the manifestation-of-interest period, predominantly CPLP-country applicants. The Minister's 1 April statement is effectively an announcement that the agency's next prioritised cohort will be the Golden Visa investors whose files have been waiting since 2022 and 2023. What this means for individual applicants depends heavily on the operational follow-through, which is the question the Portuguese immigration bar has immediately raised.
Why Lawyers Are Calling the Timing "Shameless"
The response from leading Portuguese immigration lawyers to the ministerial pledge was immediate and unusually blunt for the profession. As reported in the same IMI Daily piece, André Miranda, a partner at Fieldfisher, described the Minister's language as "very offensive and shameless." Miranda's specific operational critique was equally direct: "Therefore, the Minister's promise will have no impact whatsoever on all those who have been waiting for years for approval." The basis for this scepticism is the sequencing of the announcement against the nationality-law vote that took place the same day, which moved the start of the citizenship clock to the date of first card issuance rather than the date of the underlying investment application.
Madalena Monteiro, founder of Liberty Legal, captured the broader mood in the same reporting when she said her clients "find it hard to believe in any promises" from the government regarding the Golden Visa timeline. The pattern that immigration lawyers are identifying is that political pledges of accelerated processing have, over the past four years, repeatedly failed to translate into operational reality. AIMA's capacity is constrained by factors that no ministerial statement directly addresses: staffing levels (which were the subject of a national strike of AIMA cultural mediators on 30 March 2026), physical card-printing infrastructure, and the procedural complexity of Golden Visa files themselves. A pledge becomes operationally real only when accompanied by specific resource commitments — additional decision-making personnel, expanded printing capacity, or streamlined procedural rules — none of which was announced alongside the Minister's statement.
The Nationality Law Timing Problem
The specific reason the lawyers' response was so sharp is the temporal coincidence with the nationality-law vote. On the same day the Minister pledged a Golden Visa backlog resolution for 2026, Parliament approved a revised nationality law that — subject to presidential action and potential Constitutional Court review — extends the residency requirement for citizenship from 5 years to 10 years for non-EU, non-CPLP applicants (7 for CPLP), and moves the start of the qualifying residency period to the date of first residence card issuance rather than the date of the underlying application. This second change is the one that produces the direct collision with the Minister's pledge: a Golden Visa investor whose file has sat uncarded for three years has, under the revised law, three years added to their eventual citizenship timeline rather than subtracted from it.
The Minister's framing of the backlog clearance as a matter of "social equity" — in which the Golden Visa applicants are treated last because they "pay the most" — is therefore particularly dissonant with the lived reality of affected families. The ministerial view is that Golden Visa investors, having paid the program's qualifying investment, are a constituency whose administrative needs can be deferred relative to applicants without such resources. The investor view is that having paid into a program that was explicitly designed to provide a path to residence and citizenship, the state's failure to provide that path at the processing speed originally advertised constitutes a breach of the program's implicit commitment. Neither framing is without merit; both are being litigated, politically and judicially. See our coverage of the parliamentary vote for the detailed changes to the nationality law itself.
What "Next Year" Means for Files Filed Three Years Ago
A practical question for affected applicants is what "resolve next year" actually means in terms of their individual file. The ministerial pledge, read literally, implies that the Golden Visa backlog as a whole will be cleared by the end of 2027. Within that aggregate, older files are likely to be prioritised over newer ones, so a 2022 applicant who has already completed biometrics should move before a 2024 applicant who has not. But "resolution" in the ministerial framing appears to mean card issuance rather than progression to citizenship — and under the revised nationality law, card issuance is now the start of the citizenship clock rather than the end of the residency counter. For investors whose broader timeline was built around 2027 or 2028 citizenship eligibility, the practical effect of the pledge is therefore minimal.
A 2022 applicant whose biometrics were completed in early 2025 and whose card issues in late 2026 under the ministerial pledge will, under the revised nationality law, be eligible to apply for citizenship in late 2036 — a timeline that does not match the original Golden Visa program's marketing or the investor's likely planning assumptions. The ministerial pledge therefore has value in compressing the TRC-issuance timeline by perhaps six to twelve months relative to continued delay, but it does not compensate for the nationality-law reset. This is why the lawyers' response has been particularly negative: the pledge addresses the operationally easier half of the problem (card printing) while leaving unaddressed the structurally harder half (the extended residency requirement).
The Concrete Steps Investors Should Take Now
In light of the ministerial pledge and the lawyers' response, the practical position for a stuck Golden Visa investor in April 2026 is to treat the pledge as a political variable that may or may not translate into individual-file progression, and to continue actively managing any file that has exceeded statutory deadlines. The primary tool for this is the intimação para a prática de ato devido, which is a judicial order compelling AIMA to perform an overdue administrative act. For Golden Visa investors whose biometrics were completed more than 60 days before the statutory deadline for the decision has passed, the intimação produces card issuance within 60 to 120 days of the court order. The cost is in the low four figures.
The decision to file an intimação now, notwithstanding the ministerial pledge, is a straightforward expected-value calculation. If the pledge translates into your file moving within the next six months, the intimação was not strictly necessary but is not harmful — AIMA will usually resolve the file through the ordinary channel if that is moving faster. If the pledge does not translate into your file moving, the intimação is the decisive tool for compelling movement. For investors with life-planning dependencies on the TRC (school enrolments, tax-residency elections, property transactions), the intimação has positive expected value at the cost range involved. For investors with no specific life-planning pressure, continuing to wait with active portal monitoring and holding the intimação in reserve is reasonable. See also the Golden Visa backup plans guide for related decision-making.
How to Measure Whether the Pledge Is Real
For investors who prefer to rely on the ministerial pledge rather than filing an intimação, the practical question is how to tell whether the pledge is actually translating into operational progress. The indicators worth monitoring are: AIMA's published quarterly processing statistics, the aggregate backlog of uncarded but biometrics-complete files, the pace of biometrics appointments being scheduled for older files, and the number of card-printing events per month. AIMA has historically been inconsistent in publishing this data in detail, but the Ordem dos Advogados (Portuguese Bar) has in past years compiled independent figures that are a useful cross-reference. The Bar Association publishes an annual report on administrative-court workload that includes AIMA litigation volumes — an increase or decrease in this volume is a useful secondary indicator.
For your own file specifically, the most reliable signal is a portal status change or a substantive AIMA communication in the months following the pledge. Absent such a change, the default assumption should be that the pledge has not yet materialised for your individual case. Many applicants will find that monitoring the statistics does not change their decision: if your statutory deadline has passed and the intimação is the available tool, its expected value is largely independent of whether AIMA's throughput improves by 10% or 30% in the aggregate. It is the individual-file move that matters, and the intimação remains the decisive lever for that. For the specific operational mechanics of the court route, see the lawsuit against AIMA guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Portugal's Minister of the Presidency actually promise on 1 April 2026?
Minister António Leitão Amaro: "Next year we will resolve the outstanding issues that, for reasons of social equity, we left until the end, which are those that pay the most, the 'golden visas'." Framed as the final phase of AIMA's regularisation effort.
Do immigration lawyers believe the pledge will be honoured?
No. André Miranda (Fieldfisher) called the language "very offensive and shameless" and said the promise "will have no impact whatsoever on all those who have been waiting for years." Madalena Monteiro (Liberty Legal) said clients "find it hard to believe in any promises."
Does the "next year" timeline mean my 2022-2024 file will be resolved in 2027?
Probably not at the individual level. "Resolution" in the ministerial framing means card issuance, which under the revised nationality law now starts the citizenship clock. Older files are prioritised, but the structural citizenship timeline is not compressed.
What should a stuck Golden Visa investor do while waiting on the pledge to be honoured?
Treat the pledge as political rhetoric, not a planning anchor. Files past statutory deadlines should be actively managed via intimação — cost €1,500-€3,000, result in 60-120 days.
How can I tell whether the government pledge is translating into actual processing progress?
Monitor AIMA quarterly statistics, biometrics-to-card issuance lag, and card-printing events per month. Cross-reference with the Ordem dos Advogados report. Most reliable signal: a portal status change on your own file.