Portuguese citizenship

The process of obtaining Portuguese citizenship is changing, and it will be accelerated with the launch of a new program by Portugal’s Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN).

The goal is to enhance the capacity and, eventually, the immigration services’ ability to process Portuguese citizenship applications by 50%. The new platform will benefit from several new functions, automation, and artificial intelligence.

The new Nationality Platform’s operations will include nationality applications, which will be submitted along with documents, followed by analysis and a final decision on citizenship.

An Online Platform with New Technologies

The online platform is an evolutionary action taken by Portuguese authorities and highly imposes their motivation to make the citizenship process much smoother. The new portal offers more technological support to responsible employees with new functionalities, automation, and AI.

The first launch seems to take place at the Central Registry Office in Lisbon and at Porto Central Archive. It is expected that there will be an extension of new offices as well; indeed, more new branches will be active in the Civil Registry Services throughout Portugal.

This new initiative aims to reduce blockage in processing nationality requests by avoiding multiple manual and redundant tasks. This new platform will help eliminate the long waiting time for the citizenship application process, offering a more convenient process for applicants.

The First Months of 2024 Record More than 63,000 Portuguese Citizenship Applications

IRN reveals that there have been over 63,000 Portuguese citizenship applications, according to their registered data, in the first four months of 2024. IRN adds that last year’s same-period numbers highlight that they experienced a significant increase this year.

This brings challenges to processing this increased number of applications, and the authorities might have difficulties. However, this new platform is being launched to solve this by reducing the time spent on each application.

Less Time to Spend on Bureaucracy with IRN’s Initiative

The bureaucracy takes time, and the paper documentation, according to IRN, becomes a main reason for inefficiencies in the government authorities in addition to the burden in the logistics and the fraud risk to the process.

The new platform will support the employees in validating only the information uploaded to the system while reducing the average time spent processing the applications from about two hours to around half an hour, according to IRN’s estimation.

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