The European Court of Justice has rejected the golden visa requirement for obtaining EU citizenship.
The CJEU rules that a foreigner cannot obtain European nationality in exchange for money.
BarcelonaEuropean nationality It cannot be obtained by means of a curtain call. This was stated this Tuesday by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in a ruling on a legal case initiated in Malta, but which establishes jurisprudence throughout the EU. "The acquisition of EU citizenship cannot be the result of a commercial transaction," states the highest court in Luxembourg.
In this regard, the EU court has ruled that Maltese legislation violates European Union regulations and reminds that European nationality can in no case be based on a question of money, although each member state has the power to grant its nationality and, therefore, European citizenship. Thus, despite multi-million-dollar investments in a country within the European bloc, no one can access nationality through this means; rather, it is a question of rights and obligations that goes beyond financial aspects.
The specific case the CJEU has evaluated is that of Malta, which granted nationality for an investment of at least €690,000, but several European countries had similar regulations until a few years ago. One of the last Member States to withdraw these regulations was Cyprus, in 2020, and Bulgaria, in 2022.
On the other hand, until a few months ago there were member states that granted residence permits in exchange for investments in their territory, as is the case of Portugal, the Netherlands and Spain. Finally, they have eliminated the so-called golden visas because a significant portion of wealthy foreigners obtained European residence permits in exchange for investing in the purchase and sale of houses and apartments, which most European governments considered largely contributed to speculation in the sector and worsened the housing access crisis affecting all of Europe.
Furthermore, the European Commission has long been concerned about access to nationality for wealthy foreigners of Russian origin because the vast majority of countries did not have control over where the money for these investments came from and made it easier for Russian oligarchs to evade EU sanctions against Russia for the INCRA. In fact, the Spanish government saw how, since the start of the war in Ukraine, an average of 500 golden visas per year for the purchase of homes went from 2017 to 2022 and 3,273 in 2023.