The Portuguese authorities have announced that all foreigners whose residence permits will expire by September 30 can now renew them automatically.
The residence permits can be renewed on the website of Portugal’s Foreigners and Borders Services through an easy process that includes a few steps.
As the Foreigners and Borders Service explains, the residence permits of around 84,000 citizens of other countries will expire by the end of September.
For this reason, the authorities said through an official statement that all of these residence permits could be renewed automatically without foreigners having to go personally to a service desk.
In order to be able to renew the residence permit, once the foreigners enter the website of the Foreigners and Borders Service, they need to access the “personal area” in the “automatic renewal”, Portugal News explains.
They then need to provide their personal information, and the request for the renewal of the residence permit will be sent.
The Foreigners and Borders Service notes that the possibility of automatically renewing residence permits has existed since July 2020. The same revealed that since then, around 300,000 automatic renewals have been carried out.
As part of its move to provide more foreigners with legal documents, Portugal decided earlier in February to grant one-year residence permits to citizens of Portuguese-Speaking countries.
Announcing the news, the government said back then that the documents would be granted automatically.
As the government explained, the move allowed around 150,000 immigrants from Portuguese-speaking countries o regularise their situation and continue residing in Portugal legally.
Moreover, the government stressed that such a move would also help the country tackle its labour shortage as more foreigners will be able to take up jobs in the country.
While the government said that all citizens of the Portuguese-speaking countries would get an extension of one year, it highlighted that to be eligible, they need to present a work contract.
Additionally, it was explained back then that the citizens of Portuguese-speaking countries would have to pay a fee of €15 when renewing their residence permit.
Portugal decided in 2022 to start applying less strict rules for all citizens of Portuguese-speaking countries in an attempt to allow more foreigners to enter and stay in the country for work and other purposes.
Following the good impact that such a move had, Portugal decided to permit all foreigners now to renew their residence permits automatically, but it did not reveal for how long they would remain valid.
