‘Citizenship sale undermines European values’ - Hannes Swoboda

Hannes Swoboda, the President of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament - which is home to Labour's four MEPs - has given the clearest of indications that he does not support Malta's sale of EU passports by the Labour government.

In a clear statement outlining his reasoning, Swoboda - who had addressed a Labour mass meeting in last year's general elections - said that linking EU citizenship to income "undermined European values".

Malta is selling passports for €650,000, in a bid to raise funds for a national posterity fund. Applicants must also buy property worth €350,000 and invest €150,000 in government bonds, but these can be redeemed after five years.

Swoboda said the decision for Malta to sell EU citizenship to third country nationals reflected "a worrying trend in the conception of all those rights related to EU citizenship, including above all freedom of movement."

One of the unique characteristics of Malta's 'Individual Investor Programme' is that it introduces a direct and free gateway to citizenship purely based on the €650,000 donation.

Swoboda struck a contrast between the monetisation of citizenship, and the restrictions on the free movement of poorer EU citizens from Romania and Bulgaria, whose restrictions were finally lifted in 2014.

"The supporters of the idea that 'free movement has to be less free' base their belief on the assumption that free movement should be free for those citizens who have a suitable income, and less free for those who haven't," Swoboda wrote in a contribution to the European University Institute's EUDO citizenship observatory.

"I would say that the very idea of the European Union as a community of values is put in question by these trends, particularly the idea that it is the duty of the EU to reinforce social cohesion, to eliminate discriminations and to provide a level playing field for the material exercise of the fundamental rights defined in the EU Charter."

Swoboda illustrated his argument by saying that many 'new Europeans' already live, study, work in EU countries and contribute to them, but do not have direct access to citizenship.

"Some have been born and raised in Europe - but still are limited in their access to citizenship. These fellow Europeans have to go through detailed and lengthy citizenship tests before they can hope to achieve naturalisation in a member state and therefore be fully EU citizens.

"I am convinced that - should member states go in the direction of a privileged gateway to national citizenship solely based on income - this would create an unacceptable discriminatory situation that is probably also incompatible with EU law as it currently stands."

Malta has no standardised test for foreigners seeking to become naturalised Maltese citizens, who also have to wait for an unspecified amount of years for a decision from the home affairs minister to grant them citizenship.

The European Parliament will discuss Malta's sale of passports on 15 January, where a vote will be taken by MEPs on a resolution concerning the IIP.

On his part, Swoboda said the EU needed common and shared guidelines on national and EU citizenship. "If we don't want to leave a golden opportunity to Eurosceptics, nationalists and populists, we must seize the chance for a leap forward in the European process involving a much wider concept of citizenship than that defined in the letter of the EU Treaties."