According to Opposition deputy leader Mario de Marco, no serious country offers citizenship for sale. And despite the good intentions to have the funds raised, some €30 million in the first year alone go toward a National Development Fund, his point is perfectly valid.

The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people out there who have recoiled at the thought of their country’s citizenship being offered, without any of the usual strings or procedures attached, to people willing to fork out the right amount of money – irrespective of how thorough the screening and due diligence procedures that are to be applied to the exercise.

This point aside, there are other revisions to the draft that should be seen to. One is that their names will not be published anywhere, as is the case with other naturalised citizens. These people who will take up the scheme must not be treated as being above the law and the country and its citizens quite rightly deserve to know who has become fellow Maltese citizens – and for the very same reasons that the names of other naturalised citizens are published periodically in the Government Gazette.

Additionally, the fact that those seeking citizenship through the Individual Investor Programme (IIP) do not need to even set foot in the country, not even for an interview, is almost equally offensive to many.

Added to these moral hurdles are the actual brass tacks of some of the other facets of the Citizenship Act, which the government has apparently made no effort to address. These are serious shortcomings that absolutely need to be addressed once the Act is being reopened and redrafted.

First of all, action should be taken in the wake of this week’s report by the Council of Europe, through its anti-racism arm the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance.

While overall the Council of Europe was positive in its fourth assessment report on Malta, the report sharply criticised the Citizenship Act as it stands in its current format, and it even went so far as to charge that the Act could be affecting the human rights of those seeking to become citizens of Malta.

One of the main problems with the legislation as it stands, according to the Council of Europe report, is that two of the stipulations of eligibility for citizenship are that applicants must be of good character and they must also be judged to be a suitable Maltese citizen. While the requirements of such traits are, of course, perfectly understandable, they are nevertheless purely objective, undefined criteria that leave the door open to arbitrary decisions and decisions potentially based on discrimination.

Also flagged by the Council of Europe, in addition to the wide discretion the authorities have in adjudicating citizenship applications, is that when a request for citizenship is denied there is no requirement for the authorities to provide the reason for the rejection. Nor are such decisions subject to a review by the courts.

The report also underscores the power a minister has to revoke the citizenship of those who have become Maltese through naturalisation and who have “by act or speech to be disloyal or disaffected toward the President or the Government of Malta”. This provision, the Council of Europe contends quite rightly, limits the right to free speech for naturalised citizens, who may be wary of speaking their mind about the running of the country. It also creates a discrepancy between citizens born in the country and those who have become citizens through naturalisation.

But what is perhaps even more concerning than the problems flagged by the Council of Europe is the problem highlighted recently by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in its report on Malta published at the beginning of the year.

That report had expressed concern about cases of children, mostly with respect to the children of irregular migrants, who are not provided with birth registration.

The Committee had stressed its concern that there is no provision in the Citizenship Act for the acquisition of Maltese citizenship by a child born in Malta who would not be eligible for citizenship of any other country because of its parents’ life situation.

It urged Malta to “ensure that all children born in its territory are registered at birth, regardless of the status of their parents, with particular attention to children in single-parent families and/or irregular migration situations”.

It also called on Malta to “ensure that a child born in Malta to parents who are foreigners, but unable to pass on their nationality, or to parents who themselves are stateless or whose nationality is unknown, is granted citizenship.”

The country simply cannot allow this situation to persist.

But the problem is that in the recent draft revision of the Citizenship Act, geared as it is solely towards setting up the Individual Investor Programme and which will provide citizenship against the payment of what is effectively a small fortune for most people, there is no intention whatsoever to address any of these very serious shortcomings.

Now there is a chance to rectify these situations, to ensure that no child born in Malta remains in stateless limbo, to provide a more robust determination process with the appropriate checks and balances. Many of these discrepancies are just too glaring to be ignored.

Malta must not push through the changes to the Citizenship Act that it is contemplating solely with respect to rolling put the red carpet for high net worth individuals – who will not need to even set foot in the country to acquire citizenship and whose names, as matters stand, will not even be made public as is the case for all other naturalised citizens – and at the same time ignore the injustices, as identified by the Council of Europe, faced by those ‘regular’ people who apply for citizenship.

Once the Citizenship Act is being amended, these amendments must provide for better transparency with respect to who is being given citizenship through the IIP since anything short of that will cast a huge shadow of doubt over the whole programme, and the Act must be amended across the board for all those seeking or deserving citizenship – at a price or not.