Following the same source, Portugal has 8000 people benefiting from the pensions as part of the bilateral agreement signed in 1991, while Brazil has 2800 people in the same situation.

According to them, these people worked in their country of origin, but also in the country they emigrated to.

The minister also brought up that this deal had an additional protocol signed onto it by the 2 countries in 2006 and lamented that many Brazilians working in Portugal and Portuguese in Brazil still don’t know of the existence of this benefit.

They added that the documentation process to access the pensions could still be simplified soon.

For this reason, a mixed Brazilian commission of technical representatives from the ministries of Social Welfare, Health, National Institution and Social Security, along with a data handling company for Brazilian welfare, gathered in Lisbon this week.

Their objective was to debate ways of simplifying the access procedure to pensions for Portuguese and Brazilian migrants with their Portuguese counterparts, taking into consideration the changes to labour laws made in the two countries over the past few years.

On the Portuguese side, the representatives of the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security, and the Ministry of Health were present.

Another goal is to improve users’ perception “so that filling the form is as intuitive as possible,” the minister highlighted.