The sale of EU passports and citizens – legally and illegally – has grown exponentially as the Brussels project grows in size and continues plans to increase its free movement area beyond its current coverage of 2.6 million square miles.
Bulgaria, Cyprus and Malta have become hotspots for people seeking the entitlement of EU citizens – who are allowed to freely work, live and travel anywhere within the 28 member states.
The European Commission has moved to crackdown on the sale of citizenship but has virtually admit defeat.
EU justice commissioner Vera Jourova said: “We have no power to ban such a practice but we have an obligation to put high requirements on the member states to be careful.
“They are granting citizenship for the whole of Europe.”
Some methods are more costly than others, around 115,000 people have been able to purchase a bogus Bulgarian origin certificates for under £5,000, which allowed them to claim an EU passport.
And then super rich Russians have been able to use their vast wealth to buy their own EU passports, costing upwards of £100,000.
Similar schemes are available across four other EU member states, this is how to buy yourself a passport to the Brussels project and its vast free movement areas.
Bulgaria
Criminal investigations are underway after senior government aides were suspected of helping over 115,000 people acquire bogus citizenship based on Bulgarian origin certificates
The figure equates to around 30 EU passports being handed out a day since Bulgaria joined the bloc in 2007.
In the last 12 months alone, 10,000 people from Ukraine, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Moldova were granted citizenship based on certificates proving they had at least one Bulgarian ancestor.
Officials say that most of those who obtained Bulgarian nationality use their new passports to settle in wealthier countries across the EU.
Malta
With so-called ‘golden passport’ schemes, wealthy investors have been able to buy themselves EU citizenship through a number of investment schemes, with Malta’s being one of the most prominent.
Under Malta’s investor programme, established in 2014, Russian tycoons have purchased EU passports for hundreds of thousands of euros.
Thousands are said to have taken advantage of the scheme, with the EU’s free movement policy the main reason behind their new purchase.
Of a list of people who had acquired Maltese citizenship in 2016 around 700 were from Russia.
Applicants for the investment programme must “contribute” €650,000 and buy property for €350,000 or rent a property for at least €16,000 a month for five years.
They must also invest €150,000 in stocks or bonds and pay other fees. Family members can be added for €25,000 to €50,000.
Portugal, Britain, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, Latvia, Spain, France, Bulgaria and the Netherlands also offer similar investment-for-visa schemes.
Cyprus
Cyprus’ golden passport scheme is deemed Europe’s most prolific and is now considered a threat to international efforts to crackdown on tax evasion.
The country offers investors two potential packages to choose from when hoping to secure a EU passport – citizenship by investment and residence by investment.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have red-flagged Cyprus’ scheme because it is at risk of “exposing the EU to the corrupt and the criminal”.
Cyprus’ CBI marketing says the island offers “the quickest, most assured route to citizenship of a European country”.
The country has made an attempt to clean up its system after receiving heavy criticism but still makes around €1 billion annually from their scheme.