AI regulation in Portugal: the EU AI Act (2026)

Resolution of the Council of Ministers 2/2026 formally approves the Agenda Nacional de Inteligência Artificial (ANIA), a 32-initiative framework across four pillars, infrastructure & data, innovation & adoption, talent & skills, and responsibility & ethics, targeting a 10-15-fold increase in national compute capacity by 2030 and an estimated €18-22 billion GDP uplift. This is Portugal's primary domestic AI policy instrument, sitting alongside the directly applicable EU AI Act.

The Portuguese government named ANACOM (the telecoms regulator) as the national market-surveillance authority and single point of contact under the EU AI Act, announced at ANACOM's annual AI regulation conference in Lisbon, six weeks after Portugal had missed the EU's 2 August 2025 deadline. ANACOM coordinates enforcement with 14 sectoral authorities including the CNPD, Banco de Portugal, and CMVM.

Portugal's data-protection authority issued Deliberação 2024/137 ordering the Worldcoin Foundation to cease iris-scan ('Orb') collection nationwide for 90 days, citing collection of minors' biometric data, denial of erasure and consent-revocation rights, and inadequate data-subject information. The investigation had been opened in August 2023 after 300,000 Portuguese had already registered; this was Portugal's first major enforcement action directly targeting an AI-powered biometric system.

Portugal enacted the Carta Portuguesa de Direitos Humanos na Era Digital, among the first laws globally to codify AI-specific rights: algorithmic decisions with significant impact must be communicated, auditable, and subject to appeal; AI development must respect transparency, explicability, security, and accountability; and the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice govern robotic and autonomous systems. Principle-based but legally binding on public bodies, it underpins subsequent AI governance.

The Portuguese government published AI Portugal 2030 under the INCoDe.2030 umbrella, making Portugal one of the first EU member states to adopt a national AI strategy. Its seven pillars covered skills, public-sector AI adoption, research, Portugal as a 'living lab,' and niche AI export markets, and it aligned explicitly with the EU's Coordinated Plan on AI, setting the foundational policy architecture for all subsequent domestic AI initiatives.

Portugal launched the Iniciativa Nacional Competências Digitais e.2030 (INCoDe.2030), an inter-ministerial programme spanning inclusion, education, qualification, specialisation, and research. It became the institutional home for the 2019 AI Portugal 2030 strategy and remains the principal cross-government coordination structure for AI and digital policy, the foundational enabling institution of Portugal's AI governance.