AIMA is getting €49 million more. Here’s why it matters

Portugal’s immigration agency is getting a lot more money. It’s Saturday, 7 November. Nineteen degrees. Air quality: 44 (Good). Here’s what you need to know.

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AIMA GETS A 50% BUDGET BOOST, WITH THE GOLDEN VISA BACKLOG A PRIORITY FOR 2027

AIMA, Portugal’s immigration and asylum agency, is set for a budget of €146 million next year, up from €97 million. That’s €49 million more, a rise of about 50%. The rise is in the 2027 State Budget, and the government says it won’t come out of general taxes. Instead, it will be paid for by the fees foreign residents already pay for residence permits, renewals and visas. At a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday, the Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, said that fee income would cover more than €100 million of spending.

The Secretary of State for Immigration, Rui Armindo Freitas, set out where some of the money will go. More than €4 million will go to digital systems and €4.2 million to improving customer service. About €1.4 million will pay for Portuguese lessons, job training and mediators who work with immigrant communities. Separately, a government resolution published on Tuesday approved up to €31.35 million to produce residence cards and other security documents through to mid-2027. The government has also promised a new National Integration Plan, funded by fees and EU money.

Leitão Amaro also told MPs that clearing outstanding golden visa applications will be a priority next year. These are officially autorizações de residência para atividade de investimento, residence permits for investment, and they carry some of AIMA’s highest fees. AIMA’s current fee schedule lists initial permit fees of €6,314.20 or €8,418.90, depending on the category. He gave no timetable this week, but a few weeks ago he told a parliamentary committee that AIMA had processed about 6,000 of the 46,000 golden visa applications waiting for a decision, around 13%.

The golden visa itself has changed shape. Buying a home stopped counting as a qualifying investment in 2023, and most applicants now invest through regulated funds. At the Wealth and Migration Summit in Lisbon, fund managers said the programme has brought in more than €7 billion since it began in 2012, with golden visa funds raising over €700 million last year. They argued that the money increasingly goes into Portuguese businesses, from industry and energy to healthcare. They also asked for steadier rules and quicker AIMA appointments. One of them, Nuno Serafim of C2 Capital Partners, floated letting investors qualify by donating to a public housing fund, though that’s an idea, not government policy.

For anyone dealing with AIMA, nothing changes yet. The budget still has to pass its final vote on 24 November, and the extra money is aimed at capacity, with more digital services, better customer support and more cards printed. If that works, waits for renewals and appointments could shorten. Golden visa holders already waiting now have a public commitment, but no date. Since February, they’ve been able to renew online, although biometrics can still mean an in-person visit. The government hasn’t said whether prioritising golden visa cases will affect how quickly other applications are processed.

Bottom line: AIMA is getting more money, paid for by the people who use it, but the promise of faster service comes without dates attached.

⚡ QUICK HITS

Storm Bruna is forecast to bring rain, wind and rough seas to Portugal from Sunday until at least Friday. Lisbon district is under a yellow warning for heavy showers and thunderstorms until midnight tonight, along with seven other mainland districts. Bruna itself is a low-pressure system sitting north of the Azores. IPMA, the national weather service, expects its first weather front to reach the mainland early on Sunday, followed by a series of further fronts lasting at least until 13 November. Madeira gets the worst of it first, with orange warnings this evening and gusts of up to 100 km/h. IPMA updates its warnings as each front approaches, so they’re worth checking before setting out.

Fuel prices are forecast to fall sharply on Monday. The ACP, Portugal’s motoring club, expects diesel to drop by about 11 cents a litre and petrol by about 12.5 cents. That’s a forecast, though, and the final figure also depends on the government. Each week, it adjusts its temporary discount on ISP, the tax on fuel, and in recent months it has sometimes trimmed that discount when prices fall, which made earlier drops at the pump smaller than forecast. So Monday’s cut could come in below the ACP’s figures, and of course prices still vary from one petrol station to the next.

Prime Minister Luís Montenegro has ended his legal fight to keep details of his family firm, Spinumviva, private. His office announced it after the Tribunal Constitucional, the Constitutional Court, rejected two more of his appeals on 3 November. Spinumviva is a consultancy Montenegro founded and later transferred to his sons. The row over payments from its clients, and whether they created conflicts of interest, led to his government losing a confidence vote in March 2025 and to the snap election that May, which his coalition won. Since then, he has been fighting a ruling by the Entidade para a Transparência, the Transparency Authority, that his declarations of income and assets must include the firm’s services, its clients and details of its bank accounts. The client list was eventually published after he filed an amended declaration. Like a previous appeal in March, the latest ones were thrown out on technicalities, so the court never decided whether he was right to keep the information private. His office says that’s a pity, but it considers the matter closed.

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🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

LOBBY (CAIS DO SODRÉ)

Breakfast at Lobby comes with an unusual view. The ground floor of the CAIS Urban Lodge hotel on Rua de São Paulo used to be an erotic museum, and the explicit paintings are still on the walls, partly hidden behind tall mirrored panels, beneath a huge chandelier. Most people sit at one long communal table, hotel guests and locals together. The breakfast plate brings bread, olives and Azorean cheese with an egg and the kitchen’s own tinned mackerel, and the croque madame swaps the usual bread for crepe batter and a crisp crumb. There are benedicts with hash browns, kimchi soup at lunchtime, and cardamom and cinnamon rolls on the counter.

At night, it turns into a cocktail bar. There are eight signature cocktails, all at €11, including a Fig Leaf Negroni made with port tonic and a smoky Bloody Polly that comes with chouriço. Plates to share include arancini with beef tartare, and there’s a stuffed spider crab for anyone celebrating. DJs usually play on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s from the owners of the Liberty brunch cafés, and there’s also a hidden speakeasy with its own menu and a radio booth run by the online station Fauve.

The morning is the calmer time to go, since the evenings fill up completely. Brunch dishes are €12 to €15, which is on the high side for Lisbon. It’s open Thursday to Monday, 8am to 3pm for breakfast and lunch, then from 7pm until midnight, or 2am on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

→ Find them here ←

Insider tip: if an Aperol spritz is the usual order, try the Per Se Spritz, the bar’s own take, made with an orange blossom infusion.

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