03
dic-2020
For its interest we reproduce the article published by the digital edition of O Jornal económico de Portugal entitled The Law of Sephardic Naturalisation: nobody understands the Government's motivation to change it.
Both all the representatives of the Jewish community in Portugal and Maria Belém Roseira (PS) and José Ribeiro e Castro (CDS), two of the politicians linked to the creation of the Law of Naturalization of the Sephardim, can understand the motivations that lead the Government, and namely the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, to understand that it is time to change an organic law with only five years and with results considered great.
In a debate launched by SEDES in the late afternoon of Thursday, July 2, both politicians, as Michael Rothwell, representative of the community of Porto, and José Carp, of the capital, were unanimous in considering the law not only virtuous - and allowed the nationalization of about 16,750 people in five years - but capable of remaining active.
The Jewish community is, in any case, available to help the Assembly of the Republic to improve it, and it certainly finds no reason to do so. And it has broken down point by point the arguments of those who think the time has come to do so. Both in terms of the numbers of a possible avalanche of requests for nationalisation - which did not happen and no one finds any reason to imagine it - and of alleged 'bargaining' with passports.
"There is no problem with the invasion of Sephardim", assured Maria Belém Roseira - in which she was seconded by Ribeiro e Castro, to counter that the change in the law will, on the contrary, "stain" Portugal's position. And he recalled that in 2013, when the law was voted on - before it was regulated in 2015 and went into effect - it deserved the unanimity of Parliament, something that is so rare that, in itself, it is already a guarantee of quality.
Maria Bethlehem Roseira denied that the amendment could have something to do with the increased tension between the European Union and Israel at a time when, precisely on 1 June, the Israeli government was due to return to annexation of West Bank territory. The Union, which has so far been little involved in this matter, has been particularly incisive with Israel these days, in particular the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who reminded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that any further annexation goes against international law. The new position of the European Union, analysts say, is because Europe wants to increase its position of leadership in terms of regional power - in an al-ura in which the United States is taking exactly the opposite course.
José Ribeiro e Castro also rejected this motivational reading - which, he said, is usually pleasing to the left - because he believes that one can have nothing to do with the other. The former leader of the CDS recalled that only the PS and PCP seem to be involved in changing the law, and that the CDS, the Left Block and the NAP have already announced that they are against any change, if it comes to a parliamentary vote.
The motivation of the PS is all the more surprising when, remember, until recently it was defended by the PS executives. The current Minister of Labour, Ana Mendes Godinho, was recently in Porto, at the time as Secretary of State for Tourism, at a lunch in a Kocher hotel - specifically dedicated to the Jewish world - where she had the opportunity to show that the Law on the Nationality of the Sephardim had positive consequences for the country.
It should be remembered that Spain even had a similar law - the Sephardim are the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula - but it had a horizon of only two years, after which the assumption of Spanish nationality could no longer be acquired through that law. But even when that window of opportunity closed, there was no abnormal flow of applications in Portugal - which set no time limit.
Alejandro de Vicente de Rojas. Abogado
Larrauri & Martí Abogados
