LISBON: Portugal’s minority government on Tuesday secured an accord with a far-right party to propose a new law toughening the rules for foreigners to get Portuguese nationality, officials said.
A first vote on the law was to be held in parliament later Tuesday following the accord with the far-right Chega party.
The law will notably extend the time required to acquire Portuguese nationality, said Hugo Soares, head of the governing coalition in parliament.
“Portugal today joins the group of European countries where it will be more difficult to obtain nationality,” said Chega leader Andre Ventura. He said both sides had made “concessions” during months of talks.
Chega became the main opposition party in parliament following elections in May last year after which center-right leader Luis Montenegro returned as prime minister but without a governing majority.
Chega has aggressively campaigned against immigration, seizing on figures that said at the end of 2024 there were more than 1.5 million foreigners in Portugal, nearly four times more than in 2017 and making up about 15 percent of the population.
Portugal government agrees with far right to toughen nationality rules
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Portugal government agrees with far right to toughen nationality rules
- The law will notably extend the time required to acquire Portuguese nationality, said Soares
- Ventura said both sides had made “concessions” during months of talks
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
