Muscat steams ahead with IIP, says Malta will reap €1 billion from passport sale

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has reacted to a vote by MEPs by saying that Malta's citizenship programme was in line with the EU treaty and that the country was sovereign in its right to regulate citizenship laws.

In the EP vote earlier today, MEPs voted overwhelmingly for Malta to amend its citizenship-by-investment scheme, the Individual Investor Programme.

Of 626 MEPs in attendance, 560 voted in favour and only 22 voted against. 44 MEPs abstained.

Muscat said he had taken note of the European Parliament's statement but said that the resolution would not be binding on Malta, just as previous resolutions calling for the introduction of abortion were not binding on Malta.

We listened and now it is time to #moveon. #CitizenshipByInvestment will improve standard of living and provide #Malta with cutting edge -JM — Joseph Muscat (@JosephMuscat_JM) January 16, 2014

The prime minister, who was addressing a press conference at Castille, said that the citizenship scheme was not a case of selling Maltese identity, but it served as a programme of investment.

"The cardinal point is that such a scheme is within the competence of the individual member states and not of other countries or, for that matter, the European Parliament."

"This programme will bring about almost €1 billion for a posterity fund and it will be set aside for projects in innovation, the environment, hospitals, medicine, healthcare, infrastructure and education. These will result in an improvement of people's quality of life, whilst creating jobs," Muscat said.

"The IIP is in line with and respects EU treaties, and it is a programme that is just like other countries' citizenship and residence programme, like Cyprus, Croatia, Latvia, Portugal, and Spain," he said, adding that the programme had been altered from its original format in the hope of reaching a compromise with the Opposition.

In an attack on the Opposition, Muscat said it was the Nationalist Party that had sold Malta off in the European Parliament as part of its "political games". "The Maltese people will not forget the way in which the PN turned against its own country in the European Parliament," Muscat said, saying that it was near-unprecedented that MEPS vote against their own country.

Muscat said that, so far, the international interest in the IIP had been "greatly encouraging", with "prestigious people" having already started showing interest in applying.

Meanwhile, the prime minister said that the former head of the civil service, Godwin Grima, will be appointed in the near future to oversee the programme.

Muscat also said he that he was satisfied that the Socialist party in the EP had attempted to remove any reference to Malta in the motion, although the outright majority voted in favour of the joint resoluton.

In a statement issued later this afternoon, the Labour Party echoed Muscat's earlier statements and accused PN leader Simon Busuttil and the opposition's MEPs of "working against the country's interests."

Labour said this was confirmed by the Nationalist MEPs David Casa and Roberta Metsola's insistence on mentioning Malta in the EP's resolution, "so much so they voted against amendments to remove references to Malta in the resolution."

The opposition's intention, Labour added, was to thwart the government's attempts to draw up to €1 billion in funds which it is tare getting to raise through the scheme.

"Surely the people have taken note of this and will remember that in the moment of truth, the leader of the opposition chose to go against his own country, simply to score political points."