The source for this summary is http://theportugalnews.com or https://expresso.pt. Latest update was September 8, 2022.

US citizens no longer need a Portuguese driving license to drive here up to the age of 60. After that the regular rules apply. See how to do that on the ‘General FAQ’s’ page.

According to a study published in Espresso Magazine, E, on March 12, 2021, Lisboa is the 3rd healthiest city in Europe and Porto is 8th, based on the following factors: obesity, life expectancy, pollution, healthcare, public security, and hours of sunlight.

Regarding the Non-Habitual Residence (NHR) policy, as of March 31st, 2020, changes were made where now a charge of 10% tax will be levied on foreign pension income after the government experienced pressure and criticism from other European countries for ‘discriminatory’ tax benefits. However, 10% is still a lot lower than other countries around the world and in some cases, it is half.

The NHR does still offer a flat income tax rate of 20% for those employed in Portugal in one of the pre-defined ‘high-value’ professions and you are still able to obtain foreign income without attracting Portuguese tax for the first ten years in Portugal.

Again for another year, Portugal is named the third safest country in the world by the Global Peace Index for 2019, behind Iceland and New Zealand. To put things in perspective, neighbor Spain is in position 32 and France is in position 60.

Will not write much about Covid-19 in Portugal. Suffice it to say we have weathered it pretty well and will be coming out of quarantine in 3 phases by June.

House prices in Portugal showed a 15.8 percent year on year increase at the end of 2019.

Such increase consolidates the cycle of strong appreciation that the residential market has experienced over the last two years, registering during the same period price variations predominantly above 15 percent.
For Ricardo Guimarães, director of Confidencial Imobiliário, “Lisbon, which was previously the driving force for national appreciation, saw increases in 2019 of around 9 percent, showing robust growth. It is expected that in 2020 the national market will begin to reflect the trend already felt in Lisbon, and that prices will eventually stabalise to more normalised rates”. In quarterly terms, the price increase at a national level stood at 4.2 percent in the last quarter of 2019.
The latest IPR results also show that house prices at the end of 2019 were 46 percent above the levels recorded at the start of the decade, in 2010. Such accumulated appreciation already absorbs the 14 percent losses that were observed between 2010 and 2013, the latter the year when house prices in the country would reached their lowest point.

"In November 2019, the unemployment rate stood at 6.7%, 0.2 percentage points higher than in the previous month and 0.3 percentage points higher than three months earlier and the same as in the same month of 2018," Portugal Statistics said.

House rents in Lisbon declined by 1.4 percent in the third quarter of 2019, falling for the first time in three years.

Since the third quarter of 2016, housing rents in the capital have risen uninterruptedly, even reaching quarterly variations above 7 percent. The results have been revealed by Confidencial Imobiliário under the Residential Income Index (IRR), an indicator that follows the behaviour of the lease values of the contracts entered into since 2010.

Since early 2018, the pace of rents in the capital has been showing signs of slowing down, a trend particularly evident over the past year and also reflecting the behaviour of housing prices in the capital. At the end of 2018, the IRR for Lisbon advanced 2.5 percent over the previous quarter, but in 2019 these variations did not reach 1.0 percent, reaching 0.9 percent in the first quarter and 0.2 percent in the second quarter.
Portugal’s Socialist Party won Sunday’s legislative elections with 36.65% of the vote, giving it 106 seats in the new parliament

A further four seats from the two emigrant constituencies have yet to be allocated.

According to data from the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Internal Administration, the Social Democratic Party came second in terms of votes, with 27.90%, giving it 77 seats.

The Left Bloc had 9.67% of the votes and 19 seats, the Communist-led CDU coalition 6.46% and 12 seats, the right-wing People’s Party (CDS-PP) 4.25% and five seats, People-Animals-Nature 3.28% and four seats, far-right party Chega 1.30% and one seat, the Liberal Initiative 1.29% and one seat, and left-green party Livre 1.09% and one seat.

The Socialist Party thus won without an absolute majority, for which it would need at least 116 members of parliament.

Portugal’s unemployment rate in June, 2019 was unchanged at 6.6 percent.

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), rent may still be increasing however it is at a slower rate than this year and last. Rent rose by some 1.15 percent during 2019 in Portugal and by 1.12 percent in 2018, while it was up by 0.54 percent in 2017 and by 0.16 percent in 2016. Rents are expected to raise 0.51 percent in 2020.

The government of Portugal’s plan to build a spaceport on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores has attracted 14 preliminary bids from several countries, including Russia, China and the United States. When complete in 2021, the Atlantic International Satellite Launch Programme will be used to launch small satellites into space.

Algarve house prices rise below national average

Property prices in the Algarve region of Portugal rose by 13% during the third quarter of 2018, however this was found to be below the national average of 15.6%. This is the third consecutive quarter that housing price increases have been below the Portuguese average and demonstrates the erratic behavior of the market in the region, when compared to the rest of the country.

The annual rate of the Portuguese Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 0.9% in February, an uptick compared with a 0.5% rise in January, Portugal's national statistics institute said. Portugal’s unemployment rate in January is estimated to have increased by 0.1 of a percentage point to 6.7%.

Fewer people applying for citizenship

In comparison to 2016, in 2017, 28.2 percent fewer people applied for Portuguese nationality. Naturalization, followed by “marriage or de facto union with Portuguese citizens for more than three years", and having a child with a Portuguese partner remained the main routes for foreigners who did acquire Portuguese nationality.

This is according to data released this past week by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). According to INE's demographic statistics, the population has been dwindling continually since 2010, although it has subsided in the last four years.

Total passengers traveling through Lisboa’s airport will surpass 29 million in 2018

In 2017 passenger traffic at Humberto Delgado airport rose by 18.8% year-on-year to a total of 26.7 million passengers. Following his speech at a conference on air navigation in Lisbon, Secretary of State Guilherme W. d'Oliveira Martins projected 29 million passengers will travel through Lisboa’s airport.

Portugal’s fertility rate one of the lowest in the EU

Portugal, according to a new study published in medical journal The Lancet, has an average birth rate of 1.3 children per woman, which is the second lowest birth rate in Europe and one of the lowest in the world. This, the research suggests, is largely due to women prioritizing professional careers as well as easy access to health care.
Portugal is among a worldwide group of just 91 countries where the average birth rate sits below two children. Within the EU, only Cyprus has a lower birth rate.
The study by the University of Washington, published in The Lancet and reported by Spanish news agency Efe, shows that in the EU, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Cyprus all have birth rates that fall below the European average of 1.6 children. The two EU countries with the highest fertility are Ireland and France.
Spain has an average of 1.4 children per woman, and Cyprus just one child per woman.
On the other hand, the study shows, Niger is the country where women have most children, at an average of seven. Niger leads the birth list (7.1), followed by Chad (6.7), Somalia (6.1) and Mali (6). Over half of the world’s nations have fertility rates less than the replacement rate.
A number of Portuguese municipalities have in recent years launched initiatives to attract young families to them, which include tax breaks and incentives for those looking to start families.
Portugal has been battling to boost its struggling birth rate and ageing population for almost a decade, having registered negative results since 2009.
Exacerbating this, according to newspaper Jornal de Notícias, is news that Portugal last year lost some 32,000 residents. However, last autumn it did experience something of a ‘baby boom’, for the first time in almost a decade, with over 1,000 babies born in October and November 2017.

New figures have revealed that workers have seen their wages increase across most pay levels. While civil servants saw their average wages rise to 880 euros, general workers earning under 600 euros dropped by 13 percent.

Workers taking home between 600 and 900 euros rose by around 9 percent, while those clearing up to 1,200 were up by 8 percent. An increase of almost 10 percent was seen by those whose net pay is up to 1,800 euros, while wages of people earning more than that grew by 7 percent.

Exports of Portuguese wine last year (2018) swelled in volume by 3.3%, to 806 million hectolitres, according to a report by Informa D&B.

According to the report, the country's trade surplus in wine also grew, to €648 million in 2018 from €634 million in 2017, despite "notable" growth in imports, of 15.3%. Despite the growth in exports, estimated production for the 2018/2019 production year slipped to 5.30 million hectolitres, around 20% less than the amount registered in the previous year, when there had been a 11.9% increase, the report added. Informa D&B also noted that 43% of exports corresponded to fortified wine, such as port, which alone accounted for 40% of the total amount exported.

In terms of regions, port wine and table wine from the Douro had the highest volume of production, representing 21.5% of the total for 2017/2018, followed by Lisbon, at 18%, the Minho and the Alentejo, at 14% each, and Beiras, at 12%. The main markets for Portuguse wine were in the European Union, which as a whole represented 60% of total sales, with the UK and France the largest single national markets. Outside the EU, the main destinations were the US, Brazil, Canada and Angola, according to the report.