Gonsalves says EU court ruling supports his case against CBI

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has cited the ruling by the European Union’s top court against citizenship by investment (CBI) in one of its member countries as strengthening his case against CBI in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

SVG remains the only of the six independent members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) without CBI.

He said that his Unity Labour Party (ULP) is opposed to such a programme, even as the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) has said it would re-implement CBI if re-elected to office.

Gonsalves said the NDP used to cite the CBI programmes in EU nations, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Malta.

“I explained my opposition and the government’s opposition to selling passports and selling citizenship. First of all, it’s wrong in principle,” Gonsalves said, and reiterated that citizenship is the highest office in the country.

“The highest office in the land can’t be for sale. And the passport is the outward sign of the inward grace of citizenship, and that, too, is not a commodity for sale,” the prime minister said.

He said CBI is “reckless, not sustainable, because … the countries you’d want to go — Canada, Britain, United States and Europe — they’re going to be closing their doors on it.

“All the signs are there, and it’s reckless to run your government on passport money and citizenship money.”

Gonsalves further said that CBI is “wrong in practice” and suggested that a country would want to make so much money from the programme that it would be sloppy with the background checks on applicants.

“Then their children get citizenship, them going come and want to see if they could exercise political control. Because you can’t stop them from voting,” the prime minister said.

He said that the NDP would point to US President Donald Trump’s Green Card investment programme.

“The NDP here said, ‘Look, Trump is selling US$5 million Green Cards. But he said that this ain’t citizenship, it might be a path to get you to citizenship, where you have to have your number of years and so on, and we see what’s happening to people even with Green Cards.”

In the ruling, the European Court of Justice ordered Malta to close its golden passport programme, saying it violates European Union law.

The court ruled that the programme “amounts to the commercialisation of the grant of the nationality of a member state and by extension that of union citizenship”. 

Gonsalves commented:

“What did I tell you? You can’t commercialise it? It’s not a commodity for sale. I ain’t need a European Union judge to tell me that. I know we would have come to this.

And meanwhile, they look at the pot of goal at the end of the citizenship, selling passports and selling citizenship. They look at pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. I say it’s a mirage; wrong in principle, wrong in practicality, not sustainable, reckless.

He said that a year and a half ago, Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, which has a CBI programme, “came from one of these meetings with the European Union. … He said, ‘Ralph, comrade, this thing is coming to an end. I’m phasing out.’

“He told me a few — about two, three weeks ago. He said his own is about 10% now of their revenues.

“So, I say, ‘Well, you ain’t doing too bad then because two back-to-back bumper seasons for tourism, you’re gone over the top. You make up for that because Antigua has developed a good infrastructure with the tourism industry; because they’ve been in it quite a while.”

Antigua hosted the Caribbean Investment Summit 2025 from April 22 to 26, and Kishore Shallow, an opposition candidate in St. Vincent, told a campaign rally in Rose Hall that Browne and the leaders of the four other OECS nations with CBI programmes had spoken glowingly about them.

Gonsalves noted that the CBI programme in Malta was one of the last of its kind in Europe, noting that Cyprus ended there in 2021 and Bulgaria the following year.

“Malta think they could have survived. Tinker here, tinker there; say, no more for Russians. No more for Belarus — the Russian sidekick in Central Europe.

“They say no. The commercialisation of the grant of a nationality of a member state, that ain’t going to cut it,” the prime minister said.

“Well, if you bring Malta to an end, St. Vincent is not a member of the European Union, would they allow you to sell your passport, sell your citizenship, to come into Europe?” said Gonsalves who in 2018 accused the European Union of using “hired ruffians” to bully small states into complying with its tax regime.

He had made the assertion in Parliament as lawmakers were summoned, two days after Christmas, to amend the International Business Companies Act, ahead of an EU review the following February, which could have seen SVG blacklisted for non-compliance.

Speaking during that same sitting of Parliament, he had said that while he does not support CBI, “… I have made the point publicly that the manner in which the European Union is going about addressing countries with that question is also one of bullying”.

In his comments last week, he said that CBI puts countries at risk of losing Schengen visa waiver.

“Why would we want to do something which is going to devalue our passport, devalue our citizenship when these are precious intangibles, part of the community in this increasingly atomised world,” the prime minister said.

“… when I speak like this now, and speak firm and clear, when they can’t answer me, they say my position is arrogant. Is there any arrogance coming from me? What is coming from is clarity. If you can’t meet my arguments, you can’t defeat them, call them what you want. But people ain’t dotish (doltish), people know what I’m saying,” Gonsalves said.