Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, Money Week, 11 December: Want to be an EU citizen? Good news – the price of a passport is falling fast
In this article:
But Malta has taken the whole selling residency thing to a new level. The state – which is part of the EU – has just announced that it will effectively sell you a passport for €650,000. You have to one way or another prove that you aren’t actually a terrorist or a dedicated money launderer. But that aside there are no strings attached – you don’t even need to have visited Malta in the past, let alone have any kind of connection to it.
Hand over the cash and bingo, you are a citizen of an EU state and have bought all the benefits that come with. That includes the right to come and go as you please across all 28 member nations. And if you like your new ID you can then buy more for your family at a mere €25,000 a pop.
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http://moneyweek.com/merryns-blog/want-to-be-an-eu-citizen-good-news-the-price-of-a-passport-is-falling-fast/
Here is another idea for the PM to raise some extra revenue without selling citizenship, and we could look to Colorado for the lead
Colorado voters also approved a 25 percent tax on all recreational-marijuana sales. The taxes are expected to generate roughly $70 million in additional revenue for the state in 2014.( Huffington Post)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531995/Hundreds-thousands-outside-EU-head-UK-passport-loophole.html
Read this, oh leaders of ours, and WEEP, if you can understand plain English that is. The bit about Malta is put in the context of the larger media story about the invasion of foreigners to the UK after restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian citizens have been lifted. That means a tsunami of press coverage in the UK.
One yearns for the days of gunboat diplomacy. A short, sharp shelling by the Royal Navy would have gone down a treat.
Imagine 50 years from today when these 1,800 families, with an average family size of 4 (2 dependent children) reside in their original countries and these 3,600 kids grows up and have their own families, also giving birth to an average 2 kids per family … and these kids grows up and have their own families …..
2 generations down the road, you have 14,400 Maltese citizens who have never set foot in Malta, never contributed anything to the country but with full citizenship and voting rights – who’s winning?
The point you make has raised eyebrows in many a European cabinet office. It is being seen as a desperate attempt by Malta to increase its demographic weight in EU decision-making bodies.