There, judicial notifications that should be issued within a maximum of 48 hours are taking more than three months to reach the rightful recipient.
Due to a lack of court officers, the Administrative Court of the Lisbon District is not issuing decisions for the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN) to urgently grant Portuguese nationality.
Recourse to the courts in Portugal does not mean having your rights recognized as quickly as expected, even in cases considered extremely urgent. Given the flood of actions against the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), with its more than 400,000 delayed requests for residence permits in Portugal, the situation has worsened, especially in the Administrative Court of the Lisbon District. There, judicial notifications that should be issued within a maximum of 48 hours are taking more than three months to reach the rightful recipient. “It’s unbelievable what’s happening,” says retired chemical engineer Lanny Fortes Máximo, 67.
Since November last year, he has been waiting for a court decision in his favor to reach the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN). Judge Daniela Santos Costa, of the Administrative Court of Lisbon, accepted Fortes Máximo's request that the body responsible for granting Portuguese citizenship give, within 30 days, a final opinion on his request. “But, unfortunately, the judicial notification remains stuck in the Court’s dispatch room,” he says. According to the Supreme Administrative Court, in addition to the excess of actions against AIMA, there is a shortage of staff. Of the 45 court officers who should be working at the Court of Justice of São Paulo, only 33 are active.
In 2022, the Brazilian filed a lawsuit with the Lisbon Registry Office requesting Portuguese nationality as a descendant of Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from Portugal during the Inquisition. In the action brought against the IRN, Fortes Máximo alleged that, because he had serious health problems, the long-awaited citizenship might not be granted to him while he was still alive, due to the IRN's slowness in analyzing the documents. “I have prostate cancer, I had heart surgery and I almost died from Covid-19. I believe I have the right to request urgency in the analysis of my case. How much longer will I live?” he asks. The Brazilian's request is among more than 420,000 processes stuck at the Institute of Registries and Notaries, as reported in the media.
Final judgment
Since the court decision came down in his favor, the Brazilian has repeatedly sent emails to the IRN. And the answer is always the same: “The Institute will only comply with the sentence when the case is final and binding.” In other words, as long as there is a possibility of legal appeals by the IRN, everything will continue as it is, at the pace that the body considers appropriate for analyzing citizenship requests. The retiree's lawyer, João Roseira, from the Martins Castro law firm, states that the IRN cannot continue to act in this way given the ruling given by Judge Daniela Santos Costa, as appeals do not have suspensive effects. “The sentence given by the judge must be carried out promptly,” he says.
As a precaution, due to his poor health, Fortes Máximo decided to wait for the case to develop in Rio de Janeiro. “My wish is to live permanently in Portugal. For this, I bought a house in Tomar, which is waiting for me. But I will only settle there when I have my citizenship in hand”, he emphasizes. He says he fell in love with Portugal in 2016. After considering the idea of living in the country, he purchased a property in a seaside resort near Tomar. Time passed and health worsened. “So, I decided to sell this house to buy another one in the city center, closer to a hospital, in case of an emergency,” he says.
The retiree guarantees that all the documentation required by the IRN was delivered, including the report certifying his descent from Sephardic Jews. “I know that there is an overload in the Brazilian justice system at the moment, but decisions considered urgent must be carried out. I have been waiting for the IRN notification from a bailiff for almost three months. According to the Brazilian Procedural Code, a court order must be complied with immediately,” he points out.
Italian flood
Fábio Knauer, CEO of Aliança Portuguesa, highlights that, if the Institute of Registries and Notaries begins to face a wave of lawsuits to decide on citizenship applications, what has become frequent in Italy could be repeated in Portugal. “There were people waiting for 12 years to be seen at the Italian consulates, especially