PN MEP Roberta Metsola has tweeted that the EU Commission, “despite Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's claims, does not, in any manner, endorse Henley & Joseph Muscat's cash-for-passports scheme.”
Her tweet included a video from a plenary debate which took place in the EU Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee.
PN MEP Roberta Metsola said in the video that selling citizenship has nothing to do with investment, and said that while she has always welcomed and pushed for investment in Malta, “passport sales is not that. However you dress it up, it is the exchange of cash for rights with no genuine link to the member state concerned, with very real security and corruption implications. One of the major selling points is that you barely need to have genuine links, so one’s private plane barely needs to touch down and one hands over cash and are granted EU citizenship in return.”
She underlined that there is a difference between citizenship and visas, or residence permits. Citizenship is irrevocable. “You pay once and your descendants benefit for ever in every EU member state. They are not just buying passports, but the irrevocable rights EU citizenship bestows on EU citizens, rights related to free movement, Visa free travel, rules related to third country nationals owning businesses, competition, and even rules on voting and standing for elections. All of this with no genuine link to the Union.”
She asked the EU Commission: “Can I say that the EU commission does not endorse the sale of passports, and while I understand that legally your interpretation is such that you are unable to stop it, are you at the very least able to say that this scheme in Malta does not have the endorsement of the Commission?”
In response to her question, and others on the issue of the sale of citizenship, the EU Commissioner Věra Jourová said: “The Commission does not endorse the system.”
“We just wrote what we had to do in the report (the recent EU Commission report on such citizenship programmes) within our competence. The legal competences of awarding citizenship is the prerogative of the member state, but it was clear what we wrote and I will repeat, we do not endorse the system... I don’t know how much it would cost if Cyprus only sold its own citizenship, but it is EU citizenship, which gives the right to vote, to be elected at local level, which guarantees consular protection etc. I think it is absolutely clear why they come through Malta and not go through Netherlands. Well they will go to the Netherlands later, and that is why we are inviting the member states to create better criteria for due diligence, which would lead to better information for other member states who have their interest not to face a security threat through this system. Also to create transparency, counties should inform about the number of cases, the nationalities of the new citizens, how they proved the genuine link with the country and the EU as per the court of justice decision requirement.”
“There are many things which should be announced to the public and not only to other member states. We are working on better systems and I am sure that countries who wish to keep or introduce the schemes will be under pretty strong pressure.”