Golden visas and golden passports policy crisis in the European Union

Abstract

In recent years, residence by investment schemes (RBI), so-called “golden visas”, and citizenship by investment schemes (CBI), so-called “golden passports”, have been established in several countries around the world. They are legal mechanisms of states that allow third-country nationals to obtain a residence permit or citizenship in a host country on the basis of a significant financial investment in his/her territory under less stringent conditions than under the standard procedures. Although this topic has received global attention, we analyse, in this article, the present issue in the European Union (EU) regional context. From the beginning, these schemes have been a point of contention between the EU institutions and the Member States that operate them. Such practices are generally perceived as opening up a privileged path for the richest third-country nationals to the EU territory and EU freedoms with an impact on all EU Member States. Due to the problems related to these schemes, combating RBI and CBI has become an EU agenda. Ever since the establishment of golden visas and golden passports policies in some EU Member States, they have been subject to external influence, not only by pressure from the EU but also by other circumstances (home affairs and public opinion in Member States, Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) with a direct impact on their functioning and their very existence. This article primarily identifies these circumstances and analyses their implications for RBI and CBI schemes in the EU. At the end of the article, we conclude that in the regional context of the EU, the policies of golden visas and golden passports are in crisis and their existence in their current form is under threat.