Lei 62/2026, in force on 11 September, repealed the clause that deemed a residence-permit renewal granted whenever Portugal's migration agency, the Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (AIMA), missed its 60-day deadline1. The deadline stays in the statute, but no consequence is now attached to breaking it.
Lawyers had been telling clients stuck in a stalled renewal to notify AIMA and claim tacit approval. From 11 September a foreigner facing a silent agency must sue instead; in July the government approved specialised immigration courts for such cases. In practice, a permit holder whose renewal runs late now keeps waiting, with no card by default. That includes holders of the D8, Portugal's digital nomad visa, whose applicants were already waiting about nine months for a first card in June.
The law transposes the EU's Pact on Migration and Asylum. It keeps the existing 90-day deadline for first-grant decisions and adds a new 30-day extension for exceptional cases. It also lets an employed permit holder change employer by notifying AIMA, without applying for a new card.
AIMA said on 1 July that about 30,000 complex cases were still open. The law gives no reason for the repeal. Lowdown's inference is that a smaller pile of open files made the penalty cheaper for the government to drop.
