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Featured question.

Residency by investment

Will the EU end golden visas entirely?

Member-state-level closures are likely to continue. Programme-by-programme: • Spain (closed 2025) and Portugal real-estate (closed 2023) reflect the strongest political signal so far. • Greece has tightened thresholds rather than closed — the political consensus is to keep the p…

Adrian Sinclair

Senior Partner & Head of European Programmes

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TopicAll7 Citizenship by investment2 Residency by investment2 Tax & residency1 Family & dependants1 Process & timelines1 Other0

Bylined Q&A7 answered questions

Residency by investment
Will the EU end golden visas entirely?
Member-state-level closures are likely to continue. Programme-by-programme: • Spain (closed 2025) and Portugal real-estate (closed 2023) reflect the strongest political signal so far. • Greece has tightened thresholds rather than closed — the political consensus is to keep the programme but make it less leveraged. • Malta MEIN and MPRP face ongoing EU Commission infringement scrutiny (case C-181/23 was the first ruling against Malta's CBI specifically). The MPRP residency programme is more durable politically. • Latvia, Hungary and others have already closed their schemes. The Commission can't force a member state to close an RBI programme directly — citizenship policy is a Member-State competence under Article 9 TEU. What it can do is restrict access to the rights citizenship confers (free movement, banking) and apply political pressure. Realistic two-year horizon: expect more tightening, fewer closures, and Caribbean programmes growing in relative importance.
Adrian Sinclair · Senior Partner & Head of European Programmes
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Citizenship by investment· From United States
How long do I need to live in Malta to naturalise via MEIN?
The Maltese Exceptional Investor Naturalisation (MEIN) is technically a *residency-then-naturalisation* programme — you become a resident first and are granted citizenship after the qualifying period. The two routes differ in qualifying period, not in physical-presence requirement: • 36-month route: €600,000 contribution • 12-month route: €750,000 contribution In both cases, the official requirement is to *establish genuine ties* with Malta — not a strict day-count. In practice, Community Malta Agency expects you to maintain an active residential address (the property you bought or leased), pay residency-related fees, hold valid health insurance, and have demonstrable links such as bank accounts and a tax-number. Most successful applicants visit several times during the qualifying period rather than living in Malta full-time. The practical minimum I see clients spend is roughly 4–6 weeks across the qualifying period, distributed across several visits. Anyone treating it as a pure paperwork exercise without any physical presence risks an enhanced-eligibility review at the citizenship stage.
Adrian Sinclair · Senior Partner & Head of European Programmes
🇲🇹 Malta
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Citizenship by investment
Should I do CBI or RBI? How do I decide?
The framework I use with clients distils to four questions: 1) Why do you actually need the second status? CBI delivers a passport in months; RBI delivers the right to live in a target country immediately but a passport only after 5–10 years of compliance. If your need is a stronger travel document, CBI usually wins. If your need is to live somewhere specific, RBI wins. 2) What's your tolerance for renewals? Many RBI programmes require renewals every 1–5 years and may demand minimum stay. CBI is typically one-time. 3) What's your tax exposure? RBI in a high-tax jurisdiction can change your global tax footprint. CBI alone usually does not. 4) What's recoverable? Most RBI investments are partially or fully recoverable after the holding period (real estate, funds). Most CBI contributions to development funds are not. At USD 600k you have access to all of Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts, St Lucia (CBI) plus Greece (Golden Visa) and Malta MPRP (RBI). I'd be happy to model both scenarios against your specific objectives in a consultation.
Adrian Sinclair · Senior Partner & Head of European Programmes
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Process & timelines
How long does a CBI application really take, end-to-end?
The realistic end-to-end timeline for a clean Caribbean CBI application in 2025 is 5–8 months, not the headline 3–4. Three things drive the variance: 1) Document gathering. Police certificates from some jurisdictions can take 6–10 weeks. Multi-country backgrounds (which most international applicants have) extend this materially. We typically pre-build the document checklist on day one so this runs in parallel. 2) Due diligence. The Caribbean CBI Units now operate three-tier checks (basic, enhanced, source-of-funds) and shared databases. Anything flagged at tier-1 typically adds 6–10 weeks. Self-employed applicants and those with complex corporate structures should plan for tier-2. 3) Approval queues. After the 2024 harmonisation, the Caribbean 5 publish processing-time targets but actual queue times vary by month. The November–February window is usually faster. The "3–4 month" figure is genuinely achievable for vanilla applications with clean docs and no DD friction — it just isn't the modal case.
Adrian Sinclair · Senior Partner & Head of European Programmes
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Tax & residency· From Australia
Does getting a Caribbean CBI passport change my tax residency?
No — citizenship and tax residency are separate concepts. Receiving a St Lucia passport does not, by itself, make you a St Lucian tax resident. St Lucia (and most Caribbean CBI states) operate territorial tax systems that only apply to physical residents and locally-sourced income. A CBI holder who lives, works, and earns abroad is generally outside St Lucia's tax net. Your Australian tax position is governed by Australian residency rules — primarily the resides test and the 183-day test. Holding a second passport doesn't affect those tests directly. What changes things is where you actually live: if you eventually relocate and break Australian tax residence, then the rules of your new home country apply. We strongly recommend coordinating with both an Australian tax adviser and a tax professional in any country you plan to spend material time. Citizenship is the easy part; tax residency is the part that needs careful planning.
Adrian Sinclair · Senior Partner & Head of European Programmes
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Residency by investment· From United Kingdom
Is the Portugal Golden Visa still worth it after the real-estate route closed?
For most clients in your bracket, yes — Portugal's pathway to citizenship after five years is still uniquely strong in the EU, and the closure only removed one of several routes. The most common substitution is the qualifying-fund route (€500,000 in approved Portuguese venture or private-equity funds), which preserves both the residency threshold and the asset-recoverable structure. Other live routes include capital transfer (€1.5m) and the cultural-donation route (€250,000 to Portuguese cultural heritage). The key advantage Portugal retains over Greece, Malta MPRP and Spain (now closed) is the seven-day-per-year minimum stay and the citizenship eligibility at year five. You give up the asset-recoverable nature of property, but funds are typically liquid after the residency period and the regulatory environment is now more predictable than during the 2022–2023 reform cycle.
Adrian Sinclair · Senior Partner & Head of European Programmes
🇵🇹 Portugal
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Family & dependants· From India
Can I include my parents in a Caribbean CBI application?
Yes — every operating Caribbean CBI programme allows parents and grandparents over 55 to be included as dependants of the main applicant, subject to a financial-dependency declaration. After the 2024 OECS harmonisation, the per-dependant supplements have aligned more closely across the five programmes: typically USD 25,000–50,000 in additional government fees per parent, plus a per-applicant due-diligence fee of USD 7,500. Including them in the same application is materially cheaper than separate filings — you save the duplicated government processing fee and the legal base fee. The trade-off is that any due-diligence concern with one applicant can delay the entire family. For complex backgrounds we sometimes recommend filing the principal first and adding parents under family-reunification within 12 months. Happy to model both scenarios in a consultation.
Adrian Sinclair · Senior Partner & Head of European Programmes
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Adrian Sinclair

Senior Partner & Head of European Programmes

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