Investor citizenship schemes operated by visa-exempt third countries enable third-country nationals who would otherwise be subject to the visa requirement to travel visa free to the Union. Under an investor citizenship scheme, citizenship is granted to a person in return for pre-determined payments or investments without that person having any genuine link to the third country concerned. While the Union respects the right of sovereign countries to decide on their own naturalisation procedures, visa-exempt third countries should be deterred from using visa-free access to the Union as a tool for leveraging individual investment in return for citizenship. In addition, a lack of comprehensive security checks, vetting procedures and due diligence by such third countries with regard to investor citizenship schemes poses several serious security risks for Union citizens, such as those stemming from money laundering and corruption. To prevent visa-free access to the Union being used for that purpose, it should be possible to suspend the visa exemption for a third country which chooses to operate investor citizenship schemes under which citizenship is granted to a person without that person having any genuine link to that third country.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
