Those wanting foreigners’ law changes will be judged accordingly – President

Portugal’s president has said that the parliamentary majority that wanted to change the law on foreigners “will be judged in due course for doing so”, reserving further comment on what he will do after the Constitutional Court’s decision on the proposed new law.

The country’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, argued that, at this moment, regarding the law on foreigners, what matters “is to be certain about the law that is to be changed” and that this “will be clarified by the Constitutional Court’s intervention”. He added that, politically, “it will go down in history” that there was a majority that “wanted these solutions and will be judged in due course for this”.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was speaking to journalists on Sunday evening on the sidelines of a visit to the Teleporto de Santa Maria in the Azores, after being asked what he would do if the Constitutional Court did not agree with the doubts about the new foreigners’ law that led him to send the bill to the Ratton Palace (the Constitutional Court’s HQ in Lisbon).

“As for the political debate, I will think about it right away, I will consider whether or not it is worth it, as a matter of personal affirmation, to place a political obstacle to the law for three weeks, or for 15 days, knowing that it will be approved when it comes back in the mail. Or if it is not possible to do the same in another way, which is to say ‘I enact it, but I disagree politically’”, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa added.

Marcelo also stated that he had no “major political doubts that are unrelated to the legal issues raised” and that, in order to decide what to do next, he needs to understand whether the Constitutional Court considers that the law “clashes significantly with the essential ideas of the Constitution or not”.

The country’s president also explained that “by giving priority to the Constitutional Court, he did not initially follow the path of a political veto” and that he considers it “more useful to know if there are grounds for doubts about constitutionality” because “prevention is better than cure”.

On 24 July, the country’s president submitted to the Constitutional Court the parliamentary decree amending the legal regime governing the entry, stay, departure and removal of foreigners from national territory, approved by the PSD, Chega and CDS-PP.

The head of state requested preventive review of the constitutionality of the rules on the right to family reunification and the conditions for its exercise, on the deadline for the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) to assess applications, and on the right of appeal.

Regarding the changes proposed by the Government to the labour law, Marcelo explained that the executive, being right-wing, gives greater weight, unlike its predecessors, to private entrepreneurs and competitiveness, and that this is a path legitimised at the ballot box.

“The people want a certain phase of left-wing government, so try it. The people want the right at another stage, so let’s try the right. Then we’ll see if the people want more right in the future or if they want another type of left in the future. That’s called democracy”, he said.

The country’s president explained that his role is to understand that both solutions “fit within the Constitution” and to strike a balance between verifying constitutionality and “respecting the will of the people”.

Asked if he foresaw constitutional doubts, Marcelo said that he “does not have the power to guess to what extent a text he does not know may violate the Constitution”, but that as soon as he is familiar with the amendments, he will try “to be very quick to see if there are any doubts”.