The European Union executive said on Thursday it was taking Malta to court over its golden passport policy that allows wealthy people to buy EU citizenship, even after the small island nation suspended the scheme for citizens of Russia and Belarus.
The European Commission launched infringement proceedings against Malta and Cyprus in 2020 over their golden passport schemes, and Russia’s war on Ukraine has increasingly shone a spotlight on those policies.
The commission said in a statement that “the granting of EU citizenship in exchange for predetermined payments or investments without any genuine link with the Member State concerned is not compatible with the principle of sincere cooperation” enshrined in the EU treaties.
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He noted Malta’s decision to suspend its program for Russian and Belarusian nationals, but said that “although this is a positive step, Malta continues to apply the program for all other nationalities and n ‘expressed no intention of ending it’.
Malta, its Dingli coast pictured here on September 24, 2022, stopped allowing Russians and Belarusian nationals to buy EU citizenship after coming under pressure from the EU.
(Michal Fludra/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The European Commission also said that Cyprus stopped processing all such citizenship applications in July 2021 and is “analyzing the situation closely before deciding on the next steps”. Bulgaria also had a similar program but abolished it in April.
The commission, which proposes European laws and monitors their compliance, has seized the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg for a hearing on an as yet undetermined date.
Obtaining citizenship in one of the 27 member countries also confers citizenship of the EU and, with it, the right to move freely and to access the internal market of the EU as well as to vote and to be elected in European and national elections.
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Malta’s golden passport scheme was among the topics investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia reported on before she was blown up by a car bomb just after leaving her home on the island in 2017.
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