The Right to a Basic Account Comes From a Directive, and the Directive Names the Undocumented
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
98 exceptions recorded across 37 countries · none match Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to Portugal · Opening a bank account
The right to open a basic payment account in Portugal is a Union right before it is a Portuguese one. Article 16 of the Payment Accounts Directive obliges member states to ensure that consumers legally resident in the Union have the right to open and use one with credit institutions in their territory - and it names, inside that sentence, consumers with no fixed address, asylum seekers, and consumers who hold no residence permit but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or factual reasons. The right applies irrespective of where the consumer lives, though a member state may require a genuine interest in opening the account. A directive binds the state rather than the bank, so what a customer enforces is the Portuguese law that transposed it, and that law is not read here.
At a glance
- Who has the right
- Consumers legally resident in the Union
- No fixed address
- Named inside the same sentence
- Asylum seekers
- Named inside the same sentence
- No residence permit but expulsion impossible
- Named inside the same sentence
- Where you live
- Irrelevant to the right itself
- What a member state may still ask
- A genuine interest in opening the account
- What this record does not reach
- The Portuguese law that transposed the Directive
A directive binds the State; the enforceable text is the national transposition, which is not read here.
Requirements
- Legal residence in the European Union, or one of the three situations the article names
- A genuine interest in opening the account, where the member state requires it
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«Member States shall ensure that payment accounts with basic features are offered to consumers by all credit institutions or a sufficient number of credit institutions to guarantee access thereto for all consumers in their territory, and to prevent distortions of competition. Member States shall ensure that payment accounts with basic features are not only offered by credit institutions that provide payment accounts with solely online facilities. 2. Member States shall ensure that consumers legally resident in the Union, including consumers with no fixed address and asylum seekers, and consumers who are not granted a residence permit but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or factual reasons, have the right to open and use a payment account with basic features with credit institutions located in their territory. Such a right shall apply irrespective of the consumer’s place of residence.»The obligation on the state and the three classes the article names. The second paragraph is the one that matters to a migrant reader, and it reaches people with no permit at all.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
This is the Union floor, not the Portuguese ceiling. Portugal has its own minimum banking services regime, and the Banco de Portugal's consumer site - which would carry it - refuses every request made here, so what the Portuguese instrument adds or narrows is not recorded.
The right is to a basic account. What a bank requires for any other product is its own commercial policy and nothing here reaches it.
- consolidatesDirective 2014/92/EU, article 16
EUR-Lex, Publications Office of the European Union
About this source
The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source