In Portugal you do. A Portuguese journalist has written with the following information as a prelude to a question:

“In Portugal there is a comission that grants journalistic licences of all sorts: for freelancers, collaborators, full time journalists. This licence puts its owner under a special condition before the law and finance.

“To get one of those licences I need my employer to declare I’m working for them; then I need two licensed journalists to sign a term of responsibility on my behalf; I need also a supervisor inside the company I’m working at to follow my work during a training period; this training period is variable, and the minimum is one year of “evaluation” for those who – like me – have a degree in Journalism.”

So here’s the question:

• In which countries does a journalist need a licence?
• Who and how grants it?
• Is it really needed?
• And why?

I would love to know your own experiences.