# 2. How the EU's Golden-Passport Era Ended Chapter 1 records the conclusion: for ordinary private clients, the European Union's retail investor-citizenship market has ended. This chapter sets out how that happened — programme by programme, instrument by instrument — because the manner of the ending defines what may lawfully be offered in its place (§2.8). ## 2.1 The development of European investor citizenship Investor citizenship — the grant of a member state's nationality principally in consideration of a predetermined payment or investment — operated in three EU member states. The European Commission's January 2019 report on investor citizenship and residence schemes identified Bulgaria, Cyprus and Malta as the states operating citizenship schemes, alongside 20 member states then operating investor residence schemes, the market's "golden visas" (19 following the United Kingdom's withdrawal, as the Commission's 2022 Recommendation later recorded).[^2-1][^2-2] The market developed over roughly two decades. The Commission dates the three schemes' introduction to 2005 (Bulgaria), 2007 (Cyprus) and 2013 (Malta); Bulgaria's fast-track article was inserted in 2013, and Malta's programme was created by the 2013 amendment to the Citizenship Act and re-regulated by L.N. 47 of 2014. The span of the Cypriot programme is recorded at §2.2.[^2-3][^2-4] | Member state | Scheme and principal legal basis | Principal published minimums | |---|---|---| | Cyprus | Naturalisation of investors "by exception" under Article 111A of the Civil Registry Laws; terminal terms set by Council of Ministers Decision 81.292 of 13 September 2016; renamed the "Cyprus Investment Programme" in 2018; regulations Κ.Δ.Π. 379/2020 | **At closure:** €2,000,000 qualifying investment plus two mandatory donations of €100,000 each, and — by default under Regulation 7(1) of Κ.Δ.Π. 379/2020, which requires the residence «in addition to» the Regulation 6 conditions — a privately-owned permanent residence of at least €500,000 plus VAT, giving €2,700,000 plus VAT. Regulation 7(4) provides an express exception: where the qualifying investment is itself made in residential units under Regulation 6(2), no separate permanent residence is required, provided at least one such unit is worth at least €500,000 plus VAT and is retained in the investor's ownership for life. On that residential route the requirement was therefore €2,200,000 plus VAT. Regulation 7(5) added a third case: where the residential units had already been used for another applicant's naturalisation, the investments including the residence had to total at least €2,500,000, again with €200,000 of donations. The €2,000,000 was itself the lowest of a descending series, and the conditions attached to it were revised repeatedly across the programme's life — the threshold began at the equivalent of roughly €25,000,000 in 2007, first touched €2,000,000 in a time-limited collective tier in 2014, and became the universal threshold in 2016 (see below) | | Bulgaria | Bulgarian Citizenship Act, Articles 12a (ordinary) and 14a (fast-track) | Article 12a (ordinary, five years' permanent residence): no single threshold — €500,000 for shares, bonds, treasury bills, intellectual property, concession rights or a licensed-credit-institution trustee agreement; €250,000 for a Bulgarian commercial company at least 50% owned by the investor; €3,000,000 for capital of a Bulgarian trading company; and a variable amount for a certified Class A, B or priority investment project. Article 14a (fast-track, one year's permanent residence): the Article 12a investment increased to €1,000,000, or at least €500,000 in the capital of a Bulgarian commercial company carrying out a priority investment project | | Malta (2013–2020) | Individual Investor Programme, created by the 2013 amendment to the Maltese Citizenship Act; regulations L.N. 47 of 2014 (S.L. 188.03) | €650,000 contribution; €150,000 in approved securities; property purchase of at least €350,000 or lease of at least €16,000 per year; five-year holding periods; cap of 1,800 successful main applicants | | Malta (2020–2025) | Naturalisation for exceptional services by direct investment ("MEIN"), Article 10(9) of the Citizenship Act as amended by Act XXXVIII of 2020; Granting of Citizenship for Exceptional Services Regulations 2020 (L.N. 437 of 2020, S.L. 188.06) | Contribution of €600,000 (36 months' legal residence) or €750,000 (12 months); residential property of at least €700,000 or lease of at least €16,000 per year for at least five years; donation of at least €10,000; capped at 400 certificates a year and 1,500 in total, in each case excluding dependants | *Terms as described in the cited official sources: SWD(2019) 5 final for Bulgaria and the Maltese IIP; the judgment in Case C-181/23 for the Maltese figures — ¶19 for the 2013 origin of the IIP, ¶24 and ¶102 for the MEIN contribution, property, lease and donation conditions, and ¶26, which reproduces the capping provision of the 2020 regulations in its pre-deletion form; the IIP cap as recorded by the Commission. The Cyprus figures are taken from the Council of Ministers decisions themselves as recorded in the Nikolatos Committee report and from Κ.Δ.Π. 379/2020. The Bulgarian amounts are those given in SWD(2019) 5 final, which states the Article 12a ordinary threshold as EUR 500,000 and the Article 14a fast-track threshold as EUR 1 million and sets out the alternative amounts under each article shown above; that source gives no lev figure, and none is printed here. The Bulgarian figures carry that source's date of 23 January 2019. Ancillary, dependant and professional fees are excluded.*[^2-3][^2-4][^2-5][^2-6] A single figure misdescribes the Cypriot scheme, because the price fell by roughly nine-tenths over its life. The trajectory is itself evidence of how the market behaved before the Commission moved. | In force from | Instrument | Principal qualifying threshold | | --- | --- | ---: | | 11 July 2007 | CM Decision 65.824 | CY£15m direct investment / CY£50m business / CY£10m deposits (≈€25.6m / €17.1m) | | 10 October 2011 | CM Decision 72.676 | €10m investments / €15m deposits; the €500,000 private residence introduced | | 24 May 2013 | CM Decision 75.148 | €5m; a €2m route with a €500,000 donation; €3m for depositors impaired in the 2013 bail-in; residence €500,000 plus VAT | | 19 March 2014 | CM Decisions 76.668 and 76.973 | €5m across six criteria — but a "collective large investments" criterion allowed the Council of Ministers to reduce criteria 1–4 to **€2.5m**, and, until 1 June 2014, to **€2m**, in each case for investors participating in a collective scheme of at least €12.5m | | 13 September 2016 | CM Decision 81.292 | **€2,000,000 for every route**; the collective tier abolished | | 21 May 2018 | CM Decision 84.957 | €2,000,000 retained; the scheme renamed the "Cyprus Investment Programme"; the Commission records that Cyprus decided, as of 2018, to limit grants under the scheme to 700 a year[^2-3] | | 15 May 2019 | CM Decisions 87.429 and 87.713 | €2,000,000 plus two **mandatory donations of €75,000**; holding period raised from three years to five | | 18 August 2020 | Κ.Δ.Π. 379/2020 | €2,000,000; residence €500,000 plus VAT; donations raised to **€100,000 each** | | 1 November 2020 | Council of Ministers decision of 13 October 2020 | Closed to new applications | *Thresholds and dates from the Council of Ministers decisions as recorded in the Nikolatos Committee report, and from Κ.Δ.Π. 379/2020. Sterling-era figures converted at the Cyprus pound's fixed euro conversion rate. The 2007 amounts are the scheme's opening terms, not a like-for-like equivalent of the 2016 criteria, which admitted a wider range of qualifying assets. The 700-a-year limit is not contained in the Council of Ministers decisions as reproduced in the Nikolatos Committee report, nor in Κ.Δ.Π. 379/2020; it is stated only by the Commission, which does not say whether it counted main applicants, applications or all naturalised persons. The Committee's own tables record 1,488 naturalisations in the thirteen months from 9 January 2018, which cannot be reconciled with a cap on naturalisations, so the unit requires confirmation against the text of Decision 84.957.*[^2-31][^2-3] Two features of that descent bear on the argument of this chapter. The first is its scale: the terminal threshold was approximately one-twelfth of the opening one. The second is that the published headline overstated what applicants actually paid. The €5m criterion nominally governed from 2013, but the Republic's Audit Office found that around 775 of the roughly 1,000 applications submitted between 2014 and 2016 used the €2.5m collective-investment criterion instead — so the higher figure, in the Audit Office's words, "in practice was not applied."[^2-31] Two features of the final Maltese scheme mattered to the litigation that ended the era. First, the payments were predetermined: the amounts were fixed in the regulations, not assessed against any individual contribution to the country. Secondly, the residence condition was legal rather than actual residence — the Court later recorded that the applicant's physical presence was required only for the collection of biometric data and the oath of allegiance (¶106).[^2-6] The scale of the wider market is recorded in the European Parliament's March 2022 resolution, which cited estimates for 2011–2019 of 42,180 approved applications under investor citizenship and residence schemes taken together, more than 132,000 persons acquiring residence or citizenship through them, and €21.4 billion of associated investment.[^2-7] The research service's underlying study separates the two arms of that market: it estimates 3,811 investor-citizenship applications covering 8,769 individuals including family members and €7,497 million of investment, against 38,369 residence applications covering 123,374 individuals and €13,877 million. On every measure the citizenship arm — the arm that has now closed — was the smaller of the two.[^2-7a] The figures aggregate both scheme types and are estimates; they nonetheless indicate the size of the market whose citizenship arm has now closed. ## 2.2 Cyprus and the termination of its investment programme On 12 October 2020 Al Jazeera broadcast "The Cyprus Papers Undercover", implicating the Speaker of the House of Representatives and a member of parliament. On 13 October 2020 — the following day — the Council of Ministers decided to terminate the Cyprus Investment Programme for new applications with effect from 1 November 2020.[^2-8][^2-5] The termination was prospective only. Cyprus continued to process applications already in the pipeline until July 2021. The Commission, which had sent Cyprus a letter of formal notice on 20 October 2020 on the grounds set out in §2.5, sent a reasoned opinion on 9 June 2021 directed at that continued processing.[^2-9][^2-5] The Committee of Inquiry chaired by former Supreme Court president Myron Nikolatos delivered its final report — approximately 780 pages, which has not been published — on 7 June 2021. The Committee's findings, as reported, were that 53% of the 6,779 naturalisations effected under the scheme between 2007 and August 2020 were granted unlawfully.[^2-10] The European Parliament's resolution separately recites that "just over half of the 6,779 passports" were issued without sufficient background checks — a proposition in different and narrower terms than the reported finding of unlawfulness.[^2-7] Revocation followed, in stages. The Parliament's resolution records that Cyprus announced the revocation of the citizenship of 39 foreign investors and six members of their families.[^2-7] By May 2025 the post-programme review was reported to have removed citizenship from 304 individuals — 88 investors and 216 family members — according to the interior minister.[^2-11] The Cyprus Audit Office's special report of 22 August 2022 was reported to record losses of approximately €200 million in VAT and €25 million in uncollected fees connected with the programme.[^2-12] Cyprus's programme therefore ended by executive decision under domestic pressure, within a day of a single broadcast, with the consequences for past grants still being administered years later. For a client assessing any programme, the speed of that termination — and the durability of the post-grant review that followed it — are both instructive (see §14.1 and §14.15). ## 2.3 Bulgaria's abolition of investor citizenship Bulgaria's route ended by statute rather than litigation. In October 2020, when it wrote to Cyprus and Malta, the Commission sent Bulgaria a request for further information — an information request, not a letter of formal notice.[^2-9] On 24 March 2022 the National Assembly adopted the amending Act abolishing investor citizenship.[^2-13] Articles 12a and 14a were repealed by the amendment promulgated in State Gazette No. 26 of 2022. The amending Act's transitional provision (§7) terminated naturalisation proceedings under the repealed articles that had not been completed by the Act's entry into force: Bulgaria's pending applicants did not receive decisions.[^2-14] The Commission records the abolition as effective from 5 April 2022.[^2-5] ## 2.4 Malta and the Court of Justice of the European Union Malta contested the Commission's position to judgment, and the chronology is worth stating exactly. The Commission sent Malta a letter of formal notice on 20 October 2020 (with Cyprus); an additional letter of formal notice on 9 June 2021, following the introduction of the MEIN scheme at the end of 2020; and a reasoned opinion on 6 April 2022. On 29 September 2022 it referred Malta to the Court of Justice of the European Union under Article 258(2) TFEU (infringement file INFR(2020)2301).[^2-9][^2-5][^2-13] On 2 March 2022, Malta had announced the suspension, until further notice, of MEIN processing for nationals of Russia and Belarus.[^2-5] By the time of referral, as the Commission recorded, Malta was the only member state still operating an investor citizenship scheme.[^2-5] That record is dated September 2022 and does not itself speak to the position at judgment; Cyprus and Bulgaria had by then closed their routes (§§2.2 and 2.3), and Malta's own scheme was discontinued only in July 2025 (below).[^2-18] The outcome was genuinely contested. Advocate General Collins, in his Opinion of 4 October 2024, proposed that the Court dismiss the action. In his analysis the Commission had failed to prove that Article 20 TFEU requires a "genuine link" for the lawful grant of nationality: "EU law does not define, much less require, the existence of such a link" (point 55).[^2-15] The Grand Chamber decided otherwise. By judgment of 29 April 2025 in Case C-181/23 *Commission v Malta*, the Court declared that, by establishing and operating the MEIN scheme — a scheme the Court characterised in its reasoning as a transactional naturalisation procedure at the end of which nationality is essentially granted in exchange for predetermined payments or investments (¶99, set out below) — Malta had failed to fulfil its obligations under Article 20 TFEU and Article 4(3) TEU, and ordered Malta to pay the costs.[^2-6] The reasoning proceeds in four steps, each anchored to a numbered paragraph of the judgment:[^2-6] - "the bedrock of the bond of nationality of a Member State is formed by the special relationship of solidarity and good faith between that State and its nationals and the reciprocity of rights and duties" (¶96); - "the definition of the conditions for granting the nationality of a Member State does not fall within the competence of the European Union, but within that of each Member State, which has a broad discretion in the choice of the criteria to be applied, provided that those criteria are applied in compliance with EU law" (¶98); - "A Member State manifestly disregards the requirement for such a special relationship of solidarity and good faith … and thus breaks the mutual trust on which Union citizenship is based, in breach of Article 20 TFEU and the principle of sincere cooperation enshrined in Article 4(3) TEU, when it establishes and implements a naturalisation scheme based on a transactional procedure … at the end of which the nationality of that Member State and, therefore, the status of Union citizen, is essentially granted in exchange for predetermined payments or investments" (¶99); - "A programme of that sort amounts to the commercialisation of the granting of the status of national of a Member State and, by extension, Union citizenship, which is incompatible with the conception of that fundamental status that stems from the Treaties" (¶100). Equally important is what the judgment does not contain:[^2-6] - The Court did not adopt a "genuine link" test. That phrase belongs to the parties' submissions — it was the Commission's formulation, and the Advocate General's answer to it — not to the Court's findings, which rest on solidarity, good faith and the commercialisation of the status. An account that attributes a genuine-link requirement to the Court misreads the judgment. - The Court did not outlaw discretionary or merit-based naturalisation. The condemned object is an institutionalised scheme operating a transactional procedure with predetermined payments or investments (see §2.7). - The judgment says nothing about investor residence schemes (see §2.6). - No fine was imposed: the judgment is a declaration under Article 258 TFEU, with costs. Malta then legislated. Act XXI of 2025 — passed on 23 July 2025 and assented to on 24 July 2025 — substituted Article 10(9) of the Citizenship Act with a merit-based power and deleted the statutory definition of the "individual investor programme"; its section 11 (new Article 27(4)) excludes from the amended Act's application any applications filed under the old Article 10(9) before the Act's entry into force, subject to regulations — pending old-scheme applications were carved out, not cancelled. The Act's commencement date has not been separately confirmed, so which applications fall within that carve-out requires confirmation at the date of any assessment.[^2-16] L.N. 159 of 2025 renamed S.L. 188.06 the "Granting of Citizenship by Naturalisation on the basis of Merit Regulations" and deleted the direct-investment machinery; the current regulations contain no contribution amount, no investment threshold, no price and no quota (see §2.7).[^2-17] The responsible agency confirmed on 23 July 2025 that the exceptional-services programme "has been discontinued".[^2-18] Malta's public framing — that the ruling confirms citizenship is a national competence — should be read as Malta's position: the judgment affirmed that competence subject to EU law (¶98) and condemned the scheme built on it.[^2-18][^2-6] The three endgames treated pending applicants differently: Cyprus processed its pipeline to July 2021; Bulgaria terminated uncompleted proceedings; Malta carved out applications filed before its 2025 Act's entry into force.[^2-5][^2-14][^2-16] Nothing in that divergence created a right for any applicant. How a closing programme treats its pipeline is a sovereign choice made at closure — a further datum for the risk analysis at §14.1. ## 2.5 The EU's objection to transactional citizenship The Union's objection was built over six years, across a report, a recommendation, a parliamentary resolution and one line of litigation — and has since been embedded in legislation. The evidential base came first. COM(2019) 12 final of 23 January 2019 set out the Commission's findings on investor citizenship and residence schemes: security concerns, money-laundering exposure, tax-evasion risk and transparency gaps.[^2-1] The AML and tax-transparency literature that has grown around those findings is examined in Chapter 15. The legal formulation followed on 20 October 2020, in the letters of formal notice to Cyprus and Malta: granting nationality "in exchange for a pre-determined payment or investment and without a genuine link with the Member States concerned, is not compatible with the principle of sincere cooperation enshrined in Article 4(3) of the Treaty on European Union", and "undermines the integrity of the status of EU citizenship provided for in Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union".[^2-9] The "genuine link" limb of that formulation was the Commission's own; as §2.4 records, the Court ultimately decided the case without adopting it. The European Parliament's resolution of 9 March 2022 (2021/2026(INL)) called investor citizenship "objectionable from an ethical, legal and economic point of view" and requested a Commission proposal for the complete phase-out of citizenship schemes across the Union, "reaching zero in 2025"; for residence schemes it requested EU-level regulation, not abolition.[^2-7] The Commission never brought forward the phase-out regulation. Investor citizenship ended instead through the infringement procedure and national repeal — a point of some practical importance, because it means the era was closed by a judgment interpreting the Treaties, not by legislation that a later legislature might amend. The Commission's Recommendation C(2022) 2028 final of 28 March 2022, adopted under Article 292 TFEU in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, drew the operative distinction. Point 1: any member state operating an investor citizenship scheme should ensure compliance with the Treaties "by repealing it immediately". Point 2: member states should "prevent investor residence schemes from operating in a way that could create risks" — checks and safeguards, not repeal. Points 3 to 5 recommended assessing withdrawal of investor-citizenship naturalisations from Russian and Belarusian nationals subject to EU restrictive measures or significantly supporting the war, withdrawing or refusing renewal of their investor residence permits, and suspending new investor-residence issuance to Russian and Belarusian nationals.[^2-2] Since the judgment, the objection has been embedded in legislation and extended beyond the Union's borders. The 2024 Anti-Money-Laundering Regulation states in its recitals that it "should not apply to investor citizenship schemes", which "must be considered as undermining the fundamental status of Union citizenship and sincere cooperation among Member States".[^2-19] The 2022 Recommendation had already recorded that the Commission was "closely scrutinising investor citizenship schemes of third countries that could be used to circumvent the EU short-stay visa procedure".[^2-2] Regulation (EU) 2025/2441 then added to the visa-suspension mechanism a ground permitting suspension of a visa exemption where a visa-exempt third country operates an investor citizenship scheme granting citizenship "in exchange for pre-determined payments or investments, without that person having any genuine link to that third country" — the legislature choosing, for third countries, the genuine-link language the Court had not needed for member states.[^2-20] The ground operates by its terms only against third countries listed in Annex II to Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 — those whose nationals are exempt from the short-stay visa requirement — so whether it can reach a given non-EU programme depends in the first place on that country's Annex listing.[^2-20] The Commission has further stated, in its Eighth Report under the Visa Suspension Mechanism, that compliance with EU law requires candidate countries to abolish existing investor citizenship schemes.[^2-21] The application, or inapplicability, of the suspension ground to particular non-EU programmes is considered at §6.9 and §14.1. ## 2.6 Why residence-by-investment remains legally distinct The distinction between citizenship schemes and residence schemes is not this report's construction; it is the EU institutions' own. Announcing the infringement steps in October 2020, the Commission wrote: "These schemes are different to investor residence schemes (or 'golden visas'), which allow third-country nationals, subject to certain conditions, to obtain a residence permit to live in an EU country."[^2-9] ### Why the European Union treated investor citizenship differently from investor residence The objection litigated in *Commission v Malta* was to the transactional grant of a member state's nationality. Nationality of a member state is not a purely domestic status. Under Article 20 TFEU, as reproduced by the Court, every person holding the nationality of a member state is a citizen of the Union, and citizens of the Union enjoy the rights provided for in the Treaties — among them the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the member states (Article 21 TFEU) and the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at municipal and European Parliament elections in the member state of residence (Article 22 TFEU).[^2-6] A single member state's decision to naturalise therefore produces rights in every other member state, each of which is bound to recognise them and had no part in the decision. That is why the Court analysed Malta's scheme through solidarity, good faith and sincere cooperation, and why it held the commercialisation of the status incompatible with the conception of it that stems from the Treaties (§2.4).[^2-6] A national residence permit confers no Union citizenship. The first admission of third-country nationals for residence remains a national competence, and EU law attaches to a residence position only at defined points: Council Directive 2003/109/EC confers EU long-term-resident status only after five years' legal and continuous residence (Article 4(1)), subject to stable-resources and sickness-insurance conditions (Article 5), and its Article 13 expressly permits member states to issue more favourable national permits which do not carry EU-wide effects.[^2-22] The judgment in C-181/23 concerns the grant of nationality only; nothing in its reasoning or operative part addresses residence permits.[^2-6] A Greek investor residence permit is accordingly a different legal object, and the difference is one of kind rather than of degree. On the terms of Article 100 of Law 5038/2023, it is: - a national immigration permission, granted by decision of a Greek administrative authority under Greek law — not nationality, and not granted by the Union; - conditional and renewable: issued for five years and renewable for equal periods only while the property remains in the holder's ownership and possession and the article's other conditions continue to be met; - revocable on statutory grounds, including sale of the qualifying property during the permit's validity, and breach of the prohibition on short-term letting, which also carries administrative fines; - subject to continuing qualification and to the control of the granting government, which decides the initial grant and every renewal; - principally a permission to reside in Greece, and no more than that — it establishes no right of access to any form of employment; - accompanied by limited short-stay mobility only: up to 90 days in any 180-day period in the other member states, on the conditions of Article 21 of the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement, and derived from the permit rather than from the holder's nationality.[^2-23][^2-24] It is not an EU passport and it is not Union citizenship. It confers no unrestricted right of residence or employment across the Union; EU-wide long-term-resident status arises, if at all, only under Directive 2003/109/EC and on that Directive's own conditions.[^2-22] It carries none of the political rights of Union citizenship — no vote in European Parliament or municipal elections in another member state, and none of the other rights Article 20(2) TFEU attaches to the status of Union citizen.[^2-6] None of this amounts to approval. The distinction is one of legal category, not a verdict on the merits of any residence programme, and nothing here should be read as suggesting that the EU institutions have endorsed, blessed or cleared the Greek programme or any structure assembled around it. The Commission's concerns about investor residence schemes are on the record and remain live; they are the subject of the paragraphs that follow, and of Chapter 15. The Union's chosen instrument for residence schemes is accordingly the regulation of conduct, not prohibition. The 2019 report catalogued risks; the Parliament demanded regulation; Recommendation C(2022) 2028 asked for checks (§2.5); and the Anti-Money-Laundering Regulation — applicable in the main from 10 July 2027 — makes "investment migration operators" obliged entities and requires enhanced due diligence, as a minimum, for third-country nationals applying for residence rights in exchange for investment.[^2-19] Regulation of this kind presupposes the lawfulness of the activity regulated: the same instrument that excludes citizenship schemes from its scope as incompatible with the Treaties brings residence-scheme intermediation within its supervisory perimeter. As at 2 August 2026, no adopted EU instrument prohibits investor residence schemes, and no new Commission initiative on such schemes had followed the Malta judgment — a dated statement of absence, not an assurance of continuity.[^2-25] The pressure on residence schemes is instead national and political, exercised through domestic legislation rather than EU instruments. This chapter's own record shows how fast a member state can move against an investment route by domestic decision alone: Cyprus terminated its citizenship programme within a day of a broadcast (§2.2), and Bulgaria repealed its articles by statute and terminated the proceedings still pending (§2.3). Several member states are reported to have closed or narrowed their investor residence routes since 2023 — Spain's programme, and the removal of real estate from Portugal's, among them — but those reports were not confirmed against the national instruments for this report and require confirmation at the date of any assessment. Greece's investor residence programme — the residence component of the reference structure — remains in operation, with official statistics published to March 2026 recording 30,439 investor permits in force.[^2-26] Its legal basis is examined at §7.2; the corresponding legislative- and policy-change risk, which this history shows to be real in both directions, is examined at §7.14 and §14.1. ## 2.7 Exceptional naturalisation after investor citizenship The end of transactional citizenship did not extinguish every extraordinary route to a member state's nationality. Individual states retain discretionary powers to naturalise persons of exceptional merit, or persons whose admission serves a defined public interest. Two verified examples show what the category now is — and what it is not. Malta's post-judgment framework is the clearest, because it was drafted in the judgment's shadow. Article 10(9) of the Citizenship Act, as substituted by Act XXI of 2025, empowers the Minister to grant naturalisation "by merit" to "a person who renders exceptional services or who makes an exceptional contribution, including through job creation, to the Republic of Malta or to humanity, or whose naturalisation is of exceptional interest to the Republic of Malta".[^2-16] Under S.L. 188.06 as amended, the application requires at least eight months' residence in Malta, title to Maltese residential property, endorsement by a designated competent body and adequate knowledge of Maltese or English; the regulations contain no contribution amount, no investment threshold, no price and no quota — only administrative fees as established by the responsible agency; and "The Minister shall not be obliged to provide any reason in support of his decision, which decision shall be final."[^2-17] Austria's §10(6) of the Staatsbürgerschaftsgesetz 1985 — a provision of constitutional rank, present in the current consolidated version of §10 in force from 12 June 2026 — provides, in unofficial translation, that the ordinary residence, secured-livelihood and renunciation requirements cease to apply "where the Federal Government confirms that the conferral of citizenship lies in the special interest of the Republic on account of the extraordinary achievements already rendered by the alien and those still to be expected of him". It is a case-by-case power, not a programme: no published price, no advertised criteria, no right to approval.[^2-27] Comparable special-merit powers are reported to exist in other member states' nationality laws; their current terms require confirmation against the national statute at the date of any assessment and are not examined here. The judgment marks the boundary of all such powers. What the Court condemned is an institutionalised scheme operating a transactional procedure in which nationality is essentially granted in exchange for predetermined payments (¶99).[^2-6] A discretionary power exercised case by case on genuine merit is not that. A standing practice of exercising such a power essentially in exchange for predetermined payments would be. The power survives; a tariff would not. For clients, the practical position is the one stated in Chapter 1: these powers are not standardised investment programmes, they do not create a right to approval, they cannot be purchased, and they must not be presented or priced as products. Where EU citizenship is a family's long-term objective at all, the established route for most families is ordinary naturalisation after years of genuine residence under national law — for Greece, see §7.13. ## 2.8 What can and cannot now be offered to private clients As at 2 August 2026, no EU member state is recorded by the European Commission as operating an investor citizenship scheme, and none was located in the research for this report: Cyprus terminated its programme with effect from 1 November 2020 (§2.2), Bulgaria's abolition took effect on 5 April 2022 (§2.3), and Malta's exceptional-services programme was confirmed discontinued on 23 July 2025, the direct-investment machinery having been deleted from S.L. 188.06 by L.N. 159 of 2025.[^2-17][^2-18] That position was checked against the Commission's investor-citizenship policy page as at 2 August 2026, and no member-state provision to the contrary was located.[^2-25] The Court has held that establishing and operating a scheme of that kind — an institutionalised naturalisation procedure in which nationality is essentially granted in exchange for predetermined payments or investments — breaches a member state's obligations under Article 20 TFEU and Article 4(3) TEU (§2.4).[^2-6] That legal position — not commercial preference — draws the boundary of what the private-client market may now offer and claim. What cannot now be offered or represented: - EU citizenship in exchange for a predetermined payment or investment, in any packaging. No structure, however assembled, may be described as delivering it. - A member state's discretionary or merit naturalisation presented as a product: priced, assured, or marketed as an alternative to the former programmes (§2.7). - Any combination of components represented as equivalent to, or a substitute for, EU citizenship. A non-EU citizenship held alongside a residence permit issued by a member state is not EU citizenship, and the two do not merge (see §20.1). - European mobility attributed to a non-EU passport. Where a structure includes Schengen mobility, that mobility must be traced to the instrument that actually confers it (see §4.4 and §4.8). What may lawfully be offered, each element on its own legal terms, none of which can be guaranteed: - Citizenship by investment under the law of states outside the Union. These are sovereign national frameworks, to be assessed on their own statutes, administration and risks (Chapter 6) — including the application, or inapplicability, to each of them of EU third-country measures such as the visa-suspension ground described in §2.5 (see §6.9 and §14.1). - Investor residence permits under member-state national law. No adopted EU instrument prohibits such schemes as at 2 August 2026; they exist under national law, are subject to national amendment or closure, and from 10 July 2027 sit within the EU's AML supervisory perimeter (Chapter 7; §7.14). - The supporting elements — property ownership, company formation, banking applications, tax-residence assessment — each governed by its own instrument and each conditional (Chapters 8 and 9). The discipline this imposes on advice is attribution. Every right in a lawful structure must be traced to the exact instrument that confers it, with its conditions and its limits stated (Chapter 4; Appendix A). The objectives that drove the former market did not disappear with it — they are examined in Chapter 3 — but no single instrument now answers them within Europe, and no honest offering claims otherwise. The reference structure examined in Part II is built on that premise: separate instruments, separately assessed, coordinated without being merged (Chapter 5, §5.2). In every component, approval remains a decision of the relevant government (§18.9), and continuity of any programme cannot be guaranteed (§14.1). The era ended because the Court held that the grant of a member state's nationality — and with it the status of Union citizenship — cannot be made the object of a commercial transaction. Anything now offered to private clients must be able to state precisely what is being acquired, from whom, under which instrument, and what is not. The remainder of this report applies that standard to one structure. ### Notes [^2-1]: European Commission, *Investor Citizenship and Residence Schemes in the European Union*, COM(2019) 12 final, 23 January 2019; via EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52019DC0012 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-2]: European Commission, *Commission Recommendation on immediate steps in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in relation to investor citizenship schemes and investor residence schemes*, C(2022) 2028 final, 28 March 2022 (adopted under Article 292 TFEU; not OJ-numbered — cited as C(2022) 2028 final). The text was read in a copy of the official PDF hosted by a non-official mirror, https://investmentmigration.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/recommendation-limit-access-individuals-connected-Russian-Belarusian-government-citizenship-residence-EU-through-investor-schemes_en.pdf (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-3]: European Commission, Staff Working Document accompanying COM(2019) 12 final (descriptions of the Cypriot, Bulgarian and Maltese schemes), SWD(2019) 5 final, 23 January 2019; via EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52019SC0005 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-31]: Cyprus, Council of Ministers decisions establishing and amending the naturalisation-of-investors scheme (Decisions 65.824 of 11 July 2007; 72.676 of 10 October 2011; 75.148 of 24 May 2013; 76.668 and 76.973 of 19 March 2014; 81.292 of 13 September 2016; 84.957 of 21 May 2018; 87.429 and 87.713 of 15 May 2019), as recorded and quoted in the Report of the Investigative Committee into the naturalisation of foreign investors (the Nikolatos Committee), 786 pp, in Greek, https://economytoday.sigmalive.com/sites/default/files/report-nicolatou_committee_220621.pdf (accessed 4 August 2026); the closing terms in Κ.Δ.Π. 379/2020, Regulations for the naturalisation of investors by exception, 18 August 2020, http://www.cylaw.org/KDP/data/2020_1_379.pdf (accessed 4 August 2026); the practical predominance of the €2.5m collective-investment criterion in Audit Office of the Republic of Cyprus, Special Report ΥΠΕΣ/01/2022, *Audit of the Cyprus Investment Programme*, 22 August 2022, in Greek. [^2-4]: Bulgaria, *Bulgarian Citizenship Act*, Ministry of Justice consolidated text — Article 14a marked as inserted by State Gazette No. 16 of 2013 and repealed by State Gazette No. 26 of 2022; Article 12a marked as repealed by State Gazette No. 26 of 2022; transitional provision §7 terminating uncompleted proceedings read directly in the consolidation (in Bulgarian), https://justice.government.bg/home/normdoc/2134446592 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-5]: European Commission, press release IP/22/5422, *Commission decides to refer MALTA to the Court of Justice of the European Union over its investor citizenship scheme* (with the Cyprus and Bulgaria chronology), 29 September 2022; official print PDF, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/document/print/en/ip_22_5422/IP_22_5422_EN.pdf (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-6]: Court of Justice of the European Union (Grand Chamber), judgment of 29 April 2025, Case C-181/23 *Commission v Malta*, EU:C:2025:283, ¶¶9–11 (the Court's recitation of Articles 20, 21(1) and 22 TFEU in the legal-context section), ¶¶96–102 and 106 and operative part; via EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62023CJ0181 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-7]: European Parliament, *Resolution of 9 March 2022 with proposals to the Commission on citizenship and residence by investment schemes* (2021/2026(INL)), OJ C 347, 9.9.2022, p. 97; via EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52022IP0065 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-7a]: European Parliamentary Research Service, *Avenues for EU action on citizenship and residence by investment schemes*, European Added Value Assessment, PE 694.217, October 2021, Table 3 at p. 13 ("Estimated cumulative scale of CBI/RBI schemes in the EU, 2011-2019"). The table's own notes record that data could not be obtained for the residence schemes of Cyprus, Italy, Malta and Bulgaria (2005–2013), that the residence schemes of Estonia, Luxembourg and the Netherlands were excluded as small, and that some investment amounts were estimated by multiplying approvals by the minimum investment — so the residence column, and therefore the total, is understated. The citizenship column covers all three member-state schemes described in this chapter, Bulgaria as well as Cyprus and Malta; https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2021/694217/EPRS_STU(2021)694217_EN.pdf (accessed 5 August 2026). [^2-8]: Al Jazeera, "Cyprus abolishes citizenship through investment programme", 13 October 2020 (reporting the broadcast of 12 October 2020 and the decision of 13 October 2020), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/13/cyprus-abolishes-citizenship-through-investment-programme (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-9]: European Commission, press release IP/20/1925, *Investor citizenship schemes: European Commission opens infringement procedures against Cyprus and Malta* (letters of formal notice to Cyprus and Malta; information request to Bulgaria), 20 October 2020; official print PDF, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/document/print/en/ip_20_1925/IP_20_1925_EN.pdf (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-10]: Euronews, "Cyprus wrongly issued passports despite warnings, probe concludes", 8 June 2021 (reporting the Nikolatos Committee of Inquiry final report of 7 June 2021, including the 53% finding and the 6,779 naturalisations of 2007–August 2020; the report itself is unpublished), https://www.euronews.com/2021/06/08/cyprus-wrongly-issued-passports-despite-warnings-probe-concludes (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-11]: Cyprus Mail, "304 stripped of citizenship over golden passport abuses", 6 May 2025 (reported statement of the interior minister), https://cyprus-mail.com/2025/05/06/304-stripped-of-citizenship-over-golden-passport-abuses (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-12]: Cyprus Mail, "Audit Office report into golden passports says public lost millions", 22 August 2022 (reporting the Cyprus Audit Office special report of 22 August 2022; the report itself was not read), https://cyprus-mail.com/2022/08/22/audit-office-report-into-golden-passports-says-public-lost-millions/ (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-13]: European Parliamentary Research Service, "Russia's war on Ukraine: Reassessing 'citizenship by investment' schemes", PE 729.385, April 2022, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2022/729385/EPRS_ATA(2022)729385_EN.pdf (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-14]: Bulgaria, *Bulgarian Citizenship Act*, Ministry of Justice consolidated text — repeal markers "(Отм. – ДВ, бр. 26 от 2022 г.)" at Articles 12a and 14a and transitional provision §7 ("Неприключените до влизането в сила на този закон производства по отменените чл. 12а и 14а се прекратяват" — proceedings under the repealed Articles 12a and 14a not completed at entry into force are terminated), https://justice.government.bg/home/normdoc/2134446592 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-15]: Advocate General Collins, Opinion of 4 October 2024 in Case C-181/23 *Commission v Malta*, points 55 and 58; via EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62023CC0181 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-16]: Malta, *Maltese Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2025* (Act No. XXI of 2025), Government Gazette No. 21,474 (passed 23 July 2025; assented to 24 July 2025), sections 2, 5 and 11; full text via legislation.mt, https://legislation.mt/eli/act/2025/21/eng (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-17]: Malta, Subsidiary Legislation 188.06, *Granting of Citizenship by Naturalisation on the basis of Merit Regulations* (L.N. 437 of 2020, as amended by L.N. 159 of 2025), consolidated text, regulations 11A and 11B; via legislation.mt, https://legislation.mt/eli/sl/188.6/eng (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-18]: Aġenzija Komunità Malta, press release, "The Government publishes amendments to the Maltese Citizenship Act", 23 July 2025, https://komunita.gov.mt/en/2025/07/23/press-release-the-government-publishes-amendments-to-the-maltese-citizenship-act/ (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-19]: Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 31 May 2024 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing, Articles 3(3)(l) and 41 and recital 21, OJ L, 19.6.2024; via EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L_202401624 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-20]: Regulation (EU) 2025/2441 of 26 November 2025 amending Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 as regards the revision of the suspension mechanism (inserting Article 8a(1)(e), which by its terms concerns third countries listed in Annex II to Regulation (EU) 2018/1806), OJ L, 10.12.2025; via EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32025R2441 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-21]: European Commission, *Eighth Report under the Visa Suspension Mechanism*, COM(2025) 792 final, 19 December 2025, footnote 9; via EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52025DC0792 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-22]: Council Directive 2003/109/EC of 25 November 2003 concerning the status of third-country nationals who are long-term residents, Articles 3(1), 4(1), 5 and 13, OJ L 16, 23.1.2004, p. 44; via EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32003L0109 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-23]: Greece, Law 5038/2023 (Immigration Code, Government Gazette A′ 81/01.04.2023), Article 100 — §1 (grant for five years, renewable, by decision of the Secretary of the Decentralised Administration), §2(γ) (the €250,000 change-of-use category), §4 (renewal for equal periods while the property remains in the holder's ownership and possession and the article's other conditions are met; absences from Greece no obstacle), §7A (prohibition of short-term letting; revocation and administrative fines), §8 (resale during the permit's validity revokes the seller's permit) and §9 (the permits granted under the article establish no right of access to any form of employment); consolidated text (in Greek), https://www.taxheaven.gr/law/5038/2023 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-24]: Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement, Article 21, as replaced by Regulation (EU) No 265/2010, Article 1(2) (and as amended by Regulation (EU) No 610/2013: "90 days in any 180-day period"), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32010R0265 (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-25]: European Commission, Investor Citizenship Schemes policy page (checked for post-judgment initiatives; dated statement of absence as at 2 August 2026), https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/democracy-eu-citizenship-anti-corruption/eu-citizenship/investor-citizenship-schemes_en (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-26]: Greece, Ministry of Migration and Asylum, monthly statistical bulletin "Νόμιμη Μετανάστευση — Μάρτιος 2026", Annex B, investor-permit tables 12α–17 (in Greek), April 2026, https://migration.gov.gr/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ΠΑΡΑΡΤΗΜΑ-Β_Μάρτιος_2026_ΥΜΑ-GR-Ενημερωτικό-Μάρτιος-Β-Νόμιμη-Μετανάστευση.pdf (accessed 2 August 2026). [^2-27]: Austria, *Staatsbürgerschaftsgesetz 1985*, §10(6) (Verfassungsbestimmung; German original — the quotation in the text is an unofficial translation), consolidated version via the Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (current version of §10 in force from 12 June 2026), https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/NormDokument.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=10005579&Paragraf=10 (accessed 2 August 2026).