The 53-A/2025 law amends the controversial Decree-Law 117/2024 by parliamentary assessments, with amendments to the Regime Jurídico dos Instrumentos de Gestão Territorial (RJIGT), allowing the simplified reclassification of rural land into urban land for housing.

The new decree states the following, according to idealista:

  • One of the key changes involves replacing the term “moderate value” housing – previously used by the government – with “affordable rental” or “controlled cost” housing, proposed by the Socialist Party (PS).
  • Ensure that a minimum of 70% of the total above-ground soil construction area will be allocated for “public homes, accessible rent” or “homes with controlled costs” and contain guaranteed general and local infrastructures.
  • The development must align with the local strategy for housing, “the municipal housing charter or housing grant, where applicable”. Any additional functions that are dependent on or complementary to the housing purpose must not conflict with that primary objective.
  • The territorial criteria of “contiguity with urban land, as consolidation and coherence of the urbanisation to be developed with the existing urban area” was also ensured.
  • The reclassification of the soil cannot be extended to areas of the National Ecological Reserve (REN), such as coastal protection strips of land and sea, beaches, salt marshes, coastal dunes and fossil dunes, cliffs, water ways, lagoons and lakes, reservoirs and areas threatened by the sea and floods. It also now includes “strategic areas of infiltration and protection and recharge of aquifers” with “high risk of water erosion of the soil” and “slope instability”, which were not included in Decree-Law 117/2024.
  • The reclassification is also prohibited for land classified as A1 or soils categorised under classes A and B, which “must remain classified as National Agricultural Reserves (RAN)”, and areas integrated in REN and RAN, measures must be planned and implemented, based on the opinion of the municipal services or another entity, to “safeguard the preservation of fundamental natural values and functions” and “prevent and mitigate risks to people and property”.
  • Proposals for the reclassification must include an assessment of the impact on existing infrastructure, together with the anticipated costs for its reinforcement and ongoing maintenance. Additionally, the “economic and financial viability” of the project must be demonstrated, including the identification of responsible funding entities and proof of contracted financing sources and public investment.
  • The law clearly stated the revoking of the possibility of building housing for agricultural workers outside existing urban areas, however, it does not clarify that the reclassification of rural lands should be “exceptional in nature, limited to cases where there are no available urban areas”.
  • The 20% increase in the construction index, when intended for affordable rental or housing at controlled costs, the need for a non-binding opinion from the Comissão de Coordenacão e Desenvolvimento Regional (CCDR) on land not exclusively publicly owned, and the calling of a procedural conference prior to issuing an opinion were also established.

The constant alternations of the law now published were approved with votes in favour of the PSD, CDS-PP and PP against the Chega, IL, PCP, BE, Livre, PAN, a non-registered member of the parliament, and abstention from one Socialist parliament member.

On 3 April, the President of the Republic promulgated the law despite considering that it maintains “derogations to the general regime and matters that touch on combating corruption require greater substance and development, given the profound changes introduced at the initiative of the PS, with the support of the PSD, which removes objections raised regarding the previous legislation”.