Ana Rita Gil and Nuno Piçarra Party (PSD) claimed that the law should maintain the privileged regime and even extend it to the citizens of the European Union, since the Portuguese Constitution encouraged a more favourable treatment of both the citizens of the Portuguese speaking countries and the citizens of the European Union (art. 15).92 Figure 2: Attribution of equality status to Brazilian citizens (1996-2018) 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 Source: Aliens and Borders Service93 As we can see in Table 1, nationals from Cape Verde and Brazil represent a sizable share of the total foreign resident population. During the period considered, they represented more than one third of the resident foreign population. However, this share has consistently decreased since 1985. This is because the annual growth rate of the population of residents from Cape Verde is below the annual growth rates of the total resident foreign population. 92 93 30 Parliamentary Debates, Diary of the Assembly of the Republic 54, 2005: 2471. https://sefstat.sef.pt/forms/relatorios.aspx RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/1- © 2020 Author