‘Brussels can’t take away Malta’s golden passport,’ Labour MEP tells supporters

Former Prime Minister and Maltese MEP Alfred Sant has told Labour voters that the European Commission has no power to force Malta to drop its citizenship-by-investment programme.

His comments come in the wake of a report by MEPs from the TAX 3 committee, which will call on the European Parliament to ask Brussels to take away member states’ golden visa programmes.

Malta currently sells Maltese citizenship for €650,000, apart from mandatory property and investment requirements.

“The EU has no powers granted by the European treaties to oversee the Maltese Citizen by Investment programme. Malta’s success has fuelled unjust attacks – supported by PN MEPs – on Malta  and Cyprus in the European Parliament, two of the EU’s smallest member states.

“Other European countries have been granting EU citizenship to non-EU nationals for obscure and unpublicised reasons, with no accountability at all at a European level.  No one ever criticised them in the European Parliament for this practice,” Sant said, referring to states such as Portugal, Austria and Hungary.

“I strongly believe that Nationalist MEPs have every right to criticise the Labour government in Malta. But they should never harm Malta’s interests in European and other foreign circles. This is unacceptable.”

Sant pledged to continue to campaign in favour of a Europe of independent and sovereign nation states, as opposed to a federal Europe that would dictate member states’ policies from Brussels. “We can’t afford to have this vision to be hijacked by the populists,” the Maltese MEP said when addressing a social activity organised by Parliamentary Secretary Anthony Agius Decelis.

Sant exhorted voters to elect Maltese representatives who stand for the national interests of Malta and Gozo in Europe. “The support of the Maltese and Gozitan electorate on 25 May would serve to reinforce the strength with which I and like-minded candidates could operate to look after the sovereign interests of Malta and Gozo in the European Parliament.”