The Council of Ministers approved the creation of an agency for minorities and migration to replace the SEF

This Thursday, the Council of Ministers approved the creation of the Portuguese Agency for Minorities, Migration and Asylum (APMMA), which will replace the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) and the High Commission for Migration “in terms of reception and integration”. An end to the mandatory wearing of masks in medical facilities and homes was also approved.

“Today, the Council of Ministers approved the creation of the Portuguese Agency for Minorities, Migration and Asylum (APMMA), which will replace the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) and the High Commission for Migration in terms of reception and migration,” the minister said. Chairman Mariana Vieira da Silva.

The meeting of the Council of Ministers also approved a decree-law that will regulate the transitional regime for SEF employees.

According to Mariana Vieira da Silva, the regime seeks to protect the rights of workers in this vanished security service and provide “career transitions and pay changes.”

Regarding the new agency, which has a six-month transition period, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ana Catarina Méndez explained that its creation represents a paradigm shift in Portugal’s migration policy.

“Definitely, the police are separated from this policy in one direction, which will carry out their functions, and what should be the vision of the admission and integration policy in this new agency,” he said.

For this reason, APMMA will join the High Commission for Migration with the aim of ensuring faster acceptance and better acceptance of migrants.

“The agency also has a mandate for humanitarian protection and is responsible for asylum policy, for defining and converging migration policies at European level,” added Ana Catarina Méndez, insisting that the change meant “a more humanistic, more solidary and more flexible A vision for those who come here.

“Many SEF facilities are still outsourced to the agency to ensure proximity across the entire area,” he said.

“Portugal is considered a hospitable country and we want to continue to do so,” said Mariana Viera da Silva.

Interior Minister José Luis Carneiro stressed that this new agency provides “safer” national borders as it will now have GNR on maritime and land borders, PSP on air and national borders, and PJ in the fight against crime. . . .

The minister also assured that it is planned to create a unit in the internal security system. With regard to the transfer of SEF workers, they will support the PSP and GNR in the “transfer of knowledge to the security forces.”

Also at this meeting of the Council of Ministers, a decree of the law was approved, which cancels the mandatory use of masks in medical institutions and services and at home.

Despite various questions asked by journalists about the meeting between the PS Parliamentary Group and TAP CEO Christine Urmier-Widener before it was heard in Parliament, no member of the government responded.