After the first Council of Ministers dedicated to the Digital Transformation and Modernization, the Portuguese Minister of Youth and Modernization announced that foreign citizens will soon have a place dedicated to the attribution of the required Portuguese social numbers.
According to the head of the new Ministry, Margarida Balseiro Lopes, this was 1 of the 15 measures approved at the council meeting at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the Nova University of Lisbon in Almada.
In her words, “We know that tax, social security, and citizenship services face long queues…and we have thousands of foreign citizens living in Portugal who do not have access to something as basic as a tax identification number, the social security number, or the health user number.”
In response, by the last trimester of 2024, the Citizen’s Spaces (Espaços Cidadão – the public service that exists within the Citizen’s Shops (Lojas do Cidadão) and gathers the services provided by different public entities) will also be the place where foreign citizens can get their tax, social security, and health care numbers.
Apart from helping foreign citizens, this measure will also remove some pressure from the public workers that work at the respective entities, as well as reduce a bit of the bureaucracy required when moving to Portugal.
Note that this project will be implemented by AMA (Agency for Administrative Modernization) and AIMA (Agency for Integration, Migration, and Asylum).
