It’s Getting Harder To Obtain A ‘Golden Visa’ In Europe

For wealthy foreign investors, they offered easier travel, better lives and even breezier retirements. But the pathway to the so-called golden visas  grew narrower this week as two countries popular with the jet-set crowd scrapped their programs. 

Read more: Runaway Property Costs Push Portugal to End Golden Era of Visas

On Feb. 14, Ireland’s Department of Justice said its program would cease, following a review of its “appropriateness.” Two days later, the prime minister of Portugal — whose golden visa had attracted many Americans — announced his country would halt issuance of new golden visas, amid concern that foreign buyers were driving up housing prices. 

The moves came a year after Britain shut down a similar visa program for millionaire investors.

“There is an interesting paradox countries are grappling with — on the one hand, they want investment,” said Will Harvey, a leadership professor at the University of Bristol in the UK who studies reputation and skilled migration. “The flip side of it is a big political trend around the optics of very wealthy investors from overseas having a privileged status at a time when there are a lot of challenges for large swathes of society.”

Read more: Americans Are Using Their Ancestry to Gain Citizenship in Europe

Countries including Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain launched golden visa programs to attract foreign investment in the wake of the financial crisis. They brought in billions of dollars of foreign money and are credited with rejuvenating real estate markets in cities where demand had been low.

Political Problem

Over the past decade, Portugal became a magnets for high-net-worth individuals, with an estimated net inflow of 1,300 millionaires in 2022, according to data from Henley & Partners and New World Wealth. Yet golden visas brought political liabilities. Opponents argued they drove up real estate prices so high that locals couldn’t afford homes.

British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, whose country is not in the EU but had a residency-by-investment program, said 10 Russians who were later placed under sanctions used the UK’s golden visa route. And politicians in Brussels argued that the programs undermined “the essence” of EU citizenship. 

Read more: Americans Swarm Golden Visa Programs as Political Tensions Boil

Investors who eventually qualified for citizenship in Portugal and Greece then had passports giving them access to other countries in the EU. This meant a Chinese national who held a golden visa in Portugal, for instance, could eventually move to and reside permanently in France or Sweden, even though those countries do not offer them.

Chinese investors dominated the program in Portugal, where they accounted for almost half of the 11,628 residency permits granted.

Brexit Boost

Britain’s “Brexit” departure from the EU, which scuttled retirement plans for many Brits, also increased the appeal of golden visas in the UK. Kerstin Buechner, co-owner of Savills’s branch in the Portuguese region of the Algarve, said that since the UK’s exit from the EU, 75% of her clients have been British. Much of their additional property investment was motivated by a desire to regain European residency rights. 

Nuri Katz, founder of citizenship-by-investment services firm Apex Capital Partners, says that even though countries may be announcing cuts to programs, it is likely they will come back in some way, shape or form. What is more, they have spread around the globe, from Australia to the Caribbean. While a backlash similar to that in Europe has mounted in Australia, other countries have no plans to change their policies. 

“These programs have opened and closed in many different countries for a very very long time,” he said. “My guess is in Portugal they’ll reform the program, not close it permanently.”

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