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Can you sit on a board there?
Pick a market. You get the residency test, the nationality test, the work-authorisation position, the appointment steps in order, and the frictions that actually delay appointments — each cited to the instrument that creates it.
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Open to foreign directorsPT
No nationality or residency test applies to a director of a Portuguese company. What shapes a seat is the governance model the company has chosen and the 33.3% requirement on each body.
- Residency test
- None.
- Nationality test
- None.
- Work authorisation
- A non-executive director attending board meetings does not need Portuguese work authorisation. Executive roles for non-EU nationals require a residence permit.
- Board language
- Board documentation and statutory filings are in Portuguese at most issuers; the largest PSI companies with international registers work bilingually.
- Tenure limit once appointed
- Twelve years under the IPCG Code — service in any corporate body of the company, continuous or intermittent, counts towards it. The statutory test for supervisory-body members is stricter: re-election for more than two terms defeats independence.
- Time commitment
- A regular board cycle through the year plus committee or supervisory-board work; supervisory seats under the classic model carry a heavier audit workload than a board seat.
- What a seat pays
- Fees vary widely between the largest PSI issuers and the rest of a small market; each company discloses directors' pay individually in its annual governance report.
- Tax on your fees
- Directors' fees from a Portuguese company are Portuguese-source income subject to withholding for non-residents; treaty relief depends on the director's residence.
The appointment steps, in order
- 1Election by the general meeting, usually on a slate proposed for the whole body
- 2Obtain a Portuguese tax number (NIF); a non-resident generally does so through a fiscal representative
- 3Registration of the appointment in the Registo Comercial
- 4For a bank or insurer, a fit-and-proper assessment by the Banco de Portugal (or the ECB for significant banks) or by the ASF before taking office
What actually gets in the way
- Slates for both the board and the supervisory body must satisfy the 33.3% requirement, so the sex of a candidate can decide which body a seat is offered on
- The statutory two-term limit on supervisory-body independence runs out sooner than the code's twelve years at companies with short seats
- Board documentation is in Portuguese at most issuers; the largest international groups work bilingually
The instruments behind these answers
- Código das Sociedades Comerciais art. 278 — Offers three models for a public limited company: a board of directors with a supervisory board (conselho fiscal); a board of directors that includes an audit committee, plus a statutory auditor; or an executive board supervised by a general and supervisory board. (Portuguese Republic)
- Código das Sociedades Comerciais art. 414(4)–(6) — The supervisory board must include at least one independent member with suitable higher education and knowledge of auditing or accounting, and in a company whose shares trade on a regulated market a majority of its members must be independent. Holding or representing a qualifying stake of 2% or more, or having been re-elected for more than two terms, defeats statutory independence. (Portuguese Republic)
- Código das Sociedades Comerciais art. 423-B — Where the Anglo-Saxon model is used, the audit committee must have at least three members, all non-executive directors; in a listed company a majority must be independent and at least one independent member must have knowledge of auditing or accounting. (Portuguese Republic)
- Lei n.º 62/2017 — Requires at least 33.3% of each sex on the management and supervisory bodies of listed companies from the first elective general meeting after 1 January 2020. The CMVM declares non-compliance and the appointment provisional, gives the issuer 90 days to regularise, then issues a public reprimand; if non-compliance persists more than 360 days after the reprimand, it imposes a periodic penalty of up to one month's remuneration of the body for each semester of non-compliance. (Portuguese Republic)
- IPCG Corporate Governance Code 2018 (revised 2023) — Comply-or-explain. Recommends that non-executive directors outnumber executives, that independent directors be plural and at least one third of the non-executives, and that the nominations committee have a majority of independent directors. (Instituto Português de Corporate Governance)
Reviewed against primary sources in September 2026. This is governance decision-support, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and transitional provisions frequently apply — verify against the primary instrument before you rely on it.
Eligibility is only the first question
Being allowed to sit on a board there is not the same as being read for one.
The mobility index answers the second question: whether your record is legible to a board in that market, whether you hold what it is currently short of, and whether you can do the job in the language its board works in.