AIMA has removed one immigration headache.

AIMA moved residency online for EU citizens, and it’s likely it won’t stop there. It's Tuesday, 21 July. Twenty-seven degrees, holding all week. Here's what you need to know.

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AIMA MOVED EU PERMANENT RESIDENCY ONLINE, AND MORE IS COMING.

Portugal's immigration agency, the Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (AIMA), has done another sensible thing. Since the start of July, EU nationals and their family members can apply for permanent residency through its online Renewal Portal, rather than the old contact form and the wait to be told what to do next.

The scope, honestly stated: this new function covers the permanent residence certificate for European Union (EU) citizens and the card for their family members, which you become entitled to after five continuous years of legal residence. If that is you, you can now file the whole thing, documents and fees included, through the portal, and AIMA will call you in for biometrics only if it needs them. Anything you filed through the old form before the end of June still stands.

If you are a non-EU resident, don’t stop reading, because the portal increasingly is yours too. It already handles online renewals for eligible residence permits expiring between July 2025 and October 2026, and certain Golden Visa renewals dating back to 2020. This month adds the EU piece on top, and AIMA has said openly it will keep moving more of the process online "in the coming months to meet the needs of citizens." So this reads as one step in a phased rollout, not a walled-off EU feature. Alongside it, the agency has automated Social Security numbers during appointments, opened a WhatsApp booking channel, and added a tool that lets a bank or council pull a Social Security declaration directly.

There is a reason it matters now. Since April last year, AIMA only accepts applications that are complete on submission, no second chances to add a missing document, which made the old paper route genuinely risky: one gap and you started again. Moving submission online, with the requirements laid out before you file, cuts that failure rate without hiring a thousand more staff.

What it does not fix is the middle of the queue. If your card has been "in production" for months, or the portal refuses a renewal because your current card is not close enough to expiry, this does nothing for you, and those problems are real and common. The improvements are reaching people with clean, new applications faster than the people already tangled.

Bottom line: if you are an EU national coming up on five years, one of the more tedious errands in Portuguese life moved online this month. The wider story is the direction of travel. For the first time in a while, AIMA is heading towards less pain, not more, and by its own account there is more coming.

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⚡ QUICK HITS

Lisbon just set a cruise-ship record, and you can feel it on the street. The Port of Lisbon welcomed 81,735 cruise passengers in June, up 53% on last year and past the previous record, with 37 port calls. The port is celebrating the "turnaround" traffic in particular, passengers who start or end their cruise here, because it spends the most in the city. That is the case for it. The case against it is the queue outside every pastelaria near the river.

Prices eased across Europe last month. Portugal was one of four countries where they didn't. Eurostat figures show eurozone inflation fell to 2.8% in June, dropping in 22 of the 27 EU member states. Portugal held at 3.1%, one of only four euro countries, with Spain, Lithuania and Cyprus, where it did not ease. Energy is still the biggest single pressure here, up 9.1% on the year but now slowing, while stickier services prices keep the rate stuck. It feeds straight into Thursday's European Central Bank meeting, where a decision that moves Euribor, and therefore most mortgages here, is genuinely up in the air.

Flying anywhere non-Schengen this summer? Leave extra time at the airport. The EU's Entry/Exit System is now fully operational at Lisbon Airport, and longer waits at border control have become common during peak periods. If you're travelling on a non-Schengen route, arriving an hour earlier than usual is sensible. Frontex's Travel to Europe pre-registration app, available at Lisbon, lets you submit your details in advance and can speed up your first EES check, though it won't eliminate the queue.

🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

BAOBÁ CAFÉ BICA (CAIS DO SODRÉ)

Most coffee in Lisbon is still the small dark bica you knock back at a counter, and there is nothing wrong with that. Baobá is for the other mood, where the coffee itself is the reason you came. It sits on Rua de São Paulo, and its hook is unusual: the beans come from the owners' own farm in Brazil, roasted on site, so the chain from tree to cup is about as short as it gets in this city.

The verdict from people who clearly drink a lot of coffee is consistent, that this is some of the best in Lisbon, whether you take it as a cortado, a flat white or their nitro brew. The staff know the beans and will steer you rather than just take the order, and you can buy bags to take home, which plenty do on the way out.

The food holds its own rather than coasting on the coffee: roasted-on-site quality carried through to croissants, toasted sandwiches and a decent run of vegan options. Café prices, not brunch-scene prices, and street-side seating in summer. The honest notes: daytime only, roughly 8am to 5pm, so a morning or lunch plan. The menu occasionally lists a bean or espresso that has sold out, so have a second choice. And the music inside can run loud if you came to talk.

→ Coffee from their own farm, roasted on site. Find them here ←

Insider tip: If you have time go on a weekday morning, ask which single origin is freshest that week, and take a bag home rather than just a cup. Beans fresh off their own roaster is a good reason to come in.

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See you tomorrow morning.

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