Prime Minister Joseph Muscat today said that the government has ‘respectfully taken note’ of the overwhelming vote in the European Parliament today, but will go ahead with the citizenship scheme anyway.

“We have taken note of what has said, now let’s move on,” Dr Muscat said.

Dr Muscat said that applications are already being received for the scheme, and the government is going to be “very selective” in who it approves.

“We are very encouraged by the international response to the programme. Applications have started coming in, they are applications from people of a high calibre, the type of people we want,” Dr Muscat said. 

He said the government believes in the scheme and this will generate €1 billion for the benefit of all Maltese. The scheme does not go against European regulations, he insisted.

Dr Muscat said that the country is not selling citizenship, and it is in fact Opposition leader Simon Busuttil who has sold Malta out.

Labour statement

The Labour Party said in a statement that the country has noted that in the moment of truth opposition leader Simon Busuttil chose to go against his country, solely to try to score politicians points.

Referring to the European Parliament debate yesterday, the statement said that Dr Busuttil and his MEPs were working against Malta’s interests and doing everything to see that Malta was mentioned in the resolution on the Individual Investor Programme, so much so that the PN MEPs voted against amendments meant to remove references to Malta in the resolution.The leader of the opposition did not want Malta to earn about €1 billion in direct revenue which would be used to improve various sectors, including education and housing. Together with the direct revenue one should also add the investments in property and bonds, the PL said.

Simon Busuttil, it added, is working against the interest of the country.