The sought-after Golden Visa programme that Portugal had offered to non-EU nationals has been discontinued. It allowed Portuguese residence to individuals who had bought real estate or made a similar investment in the country.
Over the last ten years, Portugal has granted 11 180 residence permits to wealthy foreign citizens in exchange for investments totalling around €6,5bn (R126bn). The majority of payments received through the scheme were from South Africa, Brazil, and China.
On February 16, Prime Minister Antonio Costa, said the government would no longer issue such visas, to “fight against price speculation in real estate”. The scheme posed a risk to security, permitting money laundering, tax evasion, terrorist financing, corruption and infiltration by organised crime that was incompatible with EU norms.
The European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee has slammed the programme introduced in 2012 as “objectionable from an ethical, legal and economic point of view”, according to Forbes.
Part of the programme’s success lay in the fact that foreigners could invest the entire amount (there was no government contribution) and obtain residency in an EU country in their absence, with only 35 days spent in Portugal over five years. It was also one of the more affordable EU programmes, according to Sable International.
“Portugal’s decision to end the scheme was driven by angst over a surge in house prices that has left many local residents struggling to find adequate accommodation, particularly in Lisbon and Porto, the biggest cities,” reports the Financial Times.
However, President of the Government of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque, has said that the autonomous region of Madeira wants to keep this scheme for wealthy foreign investors, adding that it is good for the growth of high-income real estate. He added that the Regional Government had funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) for the construction of affordable housing for the middle class and young couples.
Ireland recently did away with a similar scheme – the Immigrant Investor Programme – which offered residence in exchange for an investment of €500 000 (R9,7m) – or annual investments of €1m (R19,3m) for three years.
