Babies, up to the first year of life, have, as of today, free access to the Citizen Card, "ensuring that all Portuguese are born citizens and have the right to their identity at no cost", announced today the Secretary of State for Digitization and Administrative Modernization.
On this date, which marks World Children's Day, the measure Born + Citizen and + Citizen, which will simplify the declaration of birth allowing it to be carried out through a single interaction with the Public Administration and without the need for parents to go to a physical counter.
In this way, "it will be possible to provide greater comfort to the family, at a special moment in their life", stresses the Government note.
This is a measure of the Simplex program, developed by the governmental areas of Justice and Health and financed by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).
In a first test phase, the Born + Citizen and + Citizen will be available in the maternity ward of the Centro Hospitalar de Setúbal, and it is expected, by the end of this year, its gradual expansion to the remaining public health units, where the Nascer Cidadão counters already exist (and will continue to exist), and to the health units private, where the Nascer Cidadão branches were not reactivated after the recent pandemic.
With this new way of registering the newborn's birth, through the health units, the service is no longer subject to a limited schedule, since it does not depend on the availability of the Registry's employees, promoting safety and faster and simpler contact with the civil registry right after the birth of the child. «It is the employee of the health unit who completes the birth certificate, with the information provided in person by the parents, until the moment the woman in labor is discharged», he explains.
At the same time, parents ask for the citizen card, now free of charge, which can now be sent to the home address. In 2022, 61.713 citizen cards were requested for children up to one year old.
After leaving the health unit and if the parents have chosen not to register at the maternity ward, they can use the existing services: Birth online, in https://justica.gov.pt/Servicos/Registar-nascimento, and face-to-face services at the Registration desk.
This measure will be presented at the maternity ward of the Centro Hospitalar de Setúbal, with the presence of the Minister of Justice, Catarina Sarmento e Castro, and the Secretaries of State for Justice (Pedro Ferrão Tavares), Digitalization and Administrative Modernization (Mário Campolargo), and of Health (Ricardo Mestre).
With the same purpose of making Justice closer and more accessible, an amendment to the law was also published, which aims to overcome the difficulties in proving the economic insufficiency of citizens deprived of liberty in prisons, for the purposes of exemption from fees for issuing and renewing the citizen Card.
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