anna58

Has anyone recently applied for this in Portugal? It enables you to use the health service in any european country in an emergency. It seems that to show your passport (in UK or Spain for example) is no longer acceptable. My question is, what papers did you need. My friend has been told that to apply for one they need a social security card (as opposed to the cartao de utente) How would they get this? They have been given a piece of paper which asks for proof of their state pension, what proof do they accept? Do they go to the social security or the freguesia?

In UK it's called EHIC replacing the E111 and you can get the form from the POst Office or apply online.

Sorry, a lot of questions, but I'm a believer in trying to do these things yourself and demystifying these things.

Joao

Funny you should mention this, but I went to the Social Secuirty dept in Tavira today to renew my paper Social Secuirty card which only last a year and allows me to have trreatment on the Portuguese health service but I also need my Cartao de Utente and Residence card (all three) to obtain this service I asked about this new card and was told that once I had received my new Soical Secuirty card I could go back and apply for this new EU card. From what I understand you have to have these three items to be able to get the new EU card. I will be able to tell you more once I have been through the process.
Joao

Supremegermalene

Just to confuse things...when we were over therethe oh applied for a new ID card, to be told he should apply for a Cartao Cidadao which is a Bilhete de Identidade, a Cartao Utente, a cartao seguro social, a cartao fiscal and anything else you can think of!

I am allowed to apply for one being married to a portugeezer but have to apply for nationality first, in order to do this I need to prove my link with portugal by providing 3 years of tax returns (I don't work), proof from the UK of my criminal record (lack of should I say) and a load of other tosh she started underlining stuff and I think I fell asleep after the first 10 things

It seems that if you are a citizen you can get an all in one card, if not you can get some cards that are two in one but the rest are all single ones...guess I need to get a bigger purse to put them all in

CHOPPER

We applied for this in May as we were going on holiday in August and a very nice gentleman at the social security office in Tavira told us it would take 2 months, not being sure what we needed he asked for a copy of passport, residencia, cartao du utente paper and fiscal number which we supplied. He gave us a receipt for all we supplied and hoped we would have a good holiday, well I bet most of you can guess, yes we are still waiting 3 and a bit months later for the papers.

local

It's a common thing to happen when it shouldn't ( waiting so long for the papers that the institutions themselves exige us to have) when it happens, I suggest for you to to there again personally and ask for it...pressure is a thing it works sometimes here.