In 2023, 329 non-EU citizens acquired a Maltese passport through the passport scheme with the total contributions amounting to €80.6 million.

These details were divulged by the regulator of this controversial scheme in the annual report published a few weeks prior to the landmark decision by the European Court of Justice which last month ruled that this programme breached EU law.

In its initial reaction the government said it would be studying  the ruling with the intention of bringing it in line with the principles outlined in the judgment. However, no further details have been divulged, and by the time of writing the future of the scheme, including the fate of pending applications is rather uncertain.

Going back to the 2023 report, it transpires that 96 citizenship applications were approved, with 104 naturalizations of the main applicants and a further 225 of their dependants. The numbers do not tally as applications might not necessarily take the same time to be processed.

Launched in 2014, the scheme has been a major steam of revenue for the Labour government with the overall revenue so far estimated to be in excess of €1.4 billion. In the 2020, the scheme which until then was called Individual Investment Programme (IIP) was amended and rebranded as Granting of Citizenship for Exceptional Services (GCES). Nonetheless, it remained a cash for passport scheme. Hence, the 2023 annual report comprises a section for GCES and a second section outlining the fate of any IIP applications which have not yet been processed.

In 2023, 299 applications were filed – obviously under the GCES scheme – which had 616 dependants. A total of 23 main applicants were deemed as ineligible, while 96 were approved and 87 naturalized with a further 172 dependents also naturalised. Though there we no IIP applicants granted approval, there are 17 who were naturalised as well as 53 dependants.

The report also outlines the geographic distribution of the applicants though no details are divulged of their nationalities, nor their identities. The beneficiaries are only published in the government gazette along all other foreigners who acquired Maltese citizen throughout the year. In 2023, the overwhelming number of applicants were from Asia (153), followed by European countries outside the EU (40), and North America (38).    

A key requirement in this scheme is for the applicant to acquire a property worth at least €350,000 or else make a 5-year rental agreement for a property worth at least €16,000 annually. Bar a few exceptions, all applicants went for the cheaper option to rent as there were only 4 GCES applicants and 2 IIP applicants who bought a property. In the latter case however, each property was worth in excess of €1 million.

A further requirement is to make a donation to an NGO, in which case the total amount contributed in 2023 was €1.15 million.