Government broadens tech visa coverage

The government has broadened the scope of its Tech Visa programme which issues visas to highly qualified overseas professional teams who are transferred to Portugal to work.

Now authorisation for residency is granted to employees that are transferred within a company (regardless of whether it is a tech company or not), to also exercise the professional activity of specialist or training manager.
The programme has been extended to other forms of recruitment whose objective is to foster the conditions that will attract highly qualified teams or personnel who enjoy a high degree of international mobility, and direct foreign investment companies which intend to relocate their high value added business activities from other countries, and need to bring highly qualified technical teams or specialised staff to Portugal.
The new government directive changes the obligations of certified companies, for an employee with a contract, or who supplies services to such a company “for a minimum duration of 12 months” with a minimum annual salary equivalent to 2.5 times the IAS (Social Support Index) and in the case of a highly qualified employee transferred within the same company, issuing a addendum to the contract, that they are working for the company, in Portugal.
Companies will now have to ensure that the skills of personnel hired on the back of the Tech Visa programme will have to be identified on applying for the visa and residency authorisation.
The Tech Visas will no longer only be eligible for staff at companies which are described as “technological and innovative” but can now just be referred to as “companies” (whether technological and innovative or not), now defined as any entity which, regardless of its legal status, exercises an economic activity offering goods or services on the market.