Thank you Tsym. I went to the Swiss authorities in person and they also allow doing the ME IR revalidation on the sim every other year. They actually showed me a licence with MEP expired but with ME IR current.
But they also told me that although Portugal, UK, Switzerland, etc are JAA state members each state has the authority to be more restrictive. I'm trying to speak again with the Portuguese authorities to see if they can do the same has the British and the Swiss.