In a blow to the investment migration industry, so-called “golden passport” programs that benefitted wealthy foreigners are now banned in the European Union, the bloc’s highest court ruled in a landmark decision on Tuesday. The ruling by the European Union Court of Justice (CJEU) comes after a years-long legal challenge brought by the European Commission against Malta, a small island nation situated between Sicily and North Africa that offered one of the world’s most popular golden passport programs . These citizenship-by-investment schemes, popular among wealthy nationals from countries like Russia and China, offer a backdoor path to citizenship in the E.U. without the fuss of a standard immigration process.
In its ruling, the CJEU found Malta cannot offer the golden passport program because it “amounts to the commercialisation of the granting of the status of national of a Member State and, by extension, Union citizenship,” and so is not compatible with the nature of E.U. citizenship. Once buyers have Maltese citizenship, they technically have E.U. citizenship, and can work, travel, and live freely among the 27 member states.
Malta launched the scheme as a way to attract capital from rich foreigners: for the price of at least €600,000, wealthy people can buy an expedited process to receive a Maltese passport. Since its inception in 2015, it has generated over €1.4 billion in revenue for the country, its government says. Other countries around the world have adopted citizenship-by-investment schemes, though Malta is the last one in Europe to offer it…