A European Parliament inquiry committee condemns the way Malta grants citizenship to non-EU residents who "invest" about one million euros in the Maltese economy and have a residence on Malta. Since 2013, with such a Maltese passport, Russian tycoons have been able to travel to other EU countries.
The Maltese government, defending its citizenship policy, argued that citizenship is a national competence of individual member states and not an EU competence. Lenaers said in an interview with a Maltese newspaper that he disagrees with this rhetoric. “You obtain a European passport, European citizenship through Maltese citizenship. That makes it a problem for the EU.”
“If you want to welcome dangerous people, people who have done bad things, or Russian oligarchs… okay if this is the will of the Maltese people… But the problem is that once they get Maltese citizenship, they also obtain EU citizenship, and then they can go anywhere within the EU.”
The European Commission has taken Malta to the European Court of Justice over the sale of citizenship. Since the outbreak of the Russian war against Ukraine, Malta has suspended new applications from Russian and Belarusian citizens but continues to accept wealthy applicants from other countries.
Asked about the case against Malta on selling citizenship at the EU Court of Justice, MEP Lenaers hopes it will be handled quickly. “The longer this situation persists, the more problematic it becomes.”
He recalls that the European Parliament already complained about this in 2014 or 2015 (…) and that not much has changed. It is basically also the European Commission’s task to put an end to such schemes that put European citizenship under pressure.”
Several years ago, it became evident that there were such close ties between suspicious businessmen and the Maltese government that critics described Malta as a mafia state. Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia revealed in 2016-2017 that Maltese politicians were bribed and blackmailed by businessmen from a criminal network. In 2017, she was killed in a car bomb attack.