Report on Citizenship Law: Portugal (4) not have been convicted, in a final judgment, with imprisonment of 3 years or more.68/69 (5) to not represent a danger or threat to national security or defence by his or her involvement in activities related to the practice of terrorism under the respective law. The Portuguese Administrative Courts have already stressed that all these requirements must be met for the recognition of a subjective right to naturalisation. Thus, the Administration does not have discretion to grant naturalisation to an individual who does not meet one of the requirements.70 The law which was in force until 2006 included additional requirements. The applicant had to prove that, besides residing in Portugal and speaking Portuguese, he or she also had a link to the Portuguese community, the legitimacy of which was to be assessed by the public administration. This gave too much discretion to the public administration, since it could still deny the naturalisation of an immigrant who had resided in Portugal for a long time and who had excellent language skills. The current law considers residency and knowledge of the Portuguese language as sufficient indicators of effective links with the national community. The previous version also demanded that the applicant have sufficient means of subsistence. This requirement was eliminated. Its removal happened because there were some doubts about the interpretation of art. 13(2) of the Portuguese Constitution, which forbids discrimination based on economic grounds.71 Furthermore, naturalisation no longer requires the capacity of applicants to rule their own persons, because such a requirement could provoke discrimination in cases of immigrants who have serious disabilities (Silva 2004: 132). If the creation of a subjective right warranted consensus among the political parties with parliamentary representation, the same cannot be said about the amendment of the naturalisation requirements. The Centre Social Democratic-Popular Party (CDS-PP) argued that the eliminated requirements should be essential for acquiring citizenship.72 Due to this reform, the number of naturalisations rose dramatically in recent years. In 2008, the number of applications rose from 8.970 to 34,568. During the following years, they decreased only slightly (32,415 applications in 2010 and 28,643 in 2011).73 In the latter years, acquisitions by naturalisation have remained the main mode of nationality acquisition after birth, with an average of 20.000 per year. 68 Evidence shall be made by presenting a criminal record certificates issued: by the competent Portuguese services or by the competent authorities of the country of birth, of the country of nationality and of the countries of residence, provided that the applicant was resident there after reaching the age of criminal liability (art. 6 (10)). 69 The previous version demanded that the applicant have decent moral and social behaviour. This gave too much scope to arbitrary decisions. The new version replaced a vague concept with clearly determined criteria (Ramos 2007: 208). 70 South Central Administrative Court, decision of 25 July 2010. 71 Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court considered that this requirement did not offend the fundamental law. Decision of 2 November 2005. 72 The CDS-PP argued that naturalisation was supposed to be the last step for the full integration into the Portuguese society. Therefore, there should be several integration steps preceding the naturalisation process, such as legal residence, insertion into the labour market, social security protection among other circumstances. In particular, having sufficient means of subsistence was an important requirement, as one could not demand less for the acquisition of the nationality than what was demanded for the acquisition of a residence permit (Parliamentary Debates, Diary of the Assembly of the Republic 54, 2005: 2474). 73 Source: SEF, several statistics. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/1 - © 2020 Author 21