Swiss magazine Weltwoche issues no. 24/25/26/27/2025
On 29 th April 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that Malta’s “golden passport” scheme is incompatible with EU law. This scheme allowed individuals to obtain Maltese and EU citizenship and visa free access on arrival to 190 countries, including EU member states.
Over 10 years around 5,300 joined this scheme investing more than €1.6 billion. The ECJ ruled that the scheme “commercializes” EU citizenship, reducing it to a transactional commodity rather than a status rooted in genuine ties to a member state. The ruling obliges Malta to terminate its citizenship by investment program entirely, meaning applicants can no longer acquire Maltese citizenship through investment.
On 4th October 2024 the Court’s own Advocate General Anthony Michael Collins had argued that Malta’s “Naturalisation for Exceptional Services by Direct Investment” scheme was within its sovereign right to regulate citizenship acquisition, and that no “genuine link” was required under EU or international law.
The Advocate General found that the Commission had not proven that EU law mandates a “genuine link” for naturalization, and that the scheme did not violate Article 20 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which concerns EU citizenship.
For many years the European Commission has organized a campaign against such schemes, involving also the European Parliament, and the European Economic and Social Committee with the battle cry of EC President Ursula von der Leyen: “European values, including passports, are not for sale.”
On the 4th December 2020, Carl BAUDENBACHER, former president of the EFTA court commenting on this campaign had said in the ‘NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG’: “The Commission’s campaign has been welcomed by many in the media. It is seen as an important contribution to the fight against terrorism, tax evasion, money laundering and corruption. Some of them blatantly exploit the widespread Russian and Chinese phobia, and they build on one of the most European of all European “values”: Envy.
On closer inspection, however, it turns out that the procedures brought by the Commission are legally built on sand. The accusation that the two states have violated EU law by granting their citizenship to foreigners within their competence is merely an assertion. What is particularly questionable is the fact that the Commission considers that there must be a ‘genuine link’ with the State which confers its citizenship. This ignores the fact that there are millions of people in the EU who are citizens of a state without ever having lived there.”
Usurping sovereignty
Henley & Partners, which designed Malta’s previous Individual Investor Programme, called the ECJ ruling a “highly politicized judgment.” It observed that in 2023 alone, “EU Member States collectively granted over 1.1 million citizenships —and often based on tenuous links to the granting country, such as a remote ancestry connection, without any current connection to the country granting citizenship and no other formal requirements, whether investments or residence time or other requirements. Moreover, among the largest recipients of EU citizenship are nationals from high-risk jurisdictions such as Morocco and Syria, with over 100,000 citizenships granted to individuals from each of these countries.
“Against this backdrop, the few hundred citizenships granted annually by Malta, under the most stringent security and background checks, hardly justify the non-factual, alarmist narrative promoted by the Commission and echoed in the ECJ’s ruling.”
Former EFTA Court President Baudernbacher argues that the ECJ through its judicial activism is undermining the requirement that and amendment to the EU Treaties requires unanimity. He says that that the ECJ is interfering without a clear legal basis with “the primary competence of the Member States.”
This ruling against Malta confirms how the EU is fast becoming a top-down hegemonic bloc, increasingly usurping the sovereignty of its members, homogenising them and ignoring the specific realities of its diverse members, especially of the smaller ones. The EU institutions continue to disempower the citizens of the EU countries and to hollow meaningful democracy in them. The EU is increasingly becoming more like a house built from the roof down. Houses that are built from the roof down will someday collapse and injure the many people living in them.
