The economic impact of the investors' immigration schemes in the EU
Published at: 26/11/2018 11:06 am
According to the recent study of the EPRS (European Parliamentary Research Service), the citizenship and residency by investment programmes caused on the macroeconomic level a direct inflow of 9,2 billion euros.
The study on
CBI (citizenship by investment) and
RBI (residency by investment) schemes proved that these solutions increase foreign investment in the EU Member States. Meanwhile, the investments can be categorised as property and "
foreign portfolio" investments. "Foreign portfolio" means the passive investment types as the purchase of securities, bonds or other financial assets held passively by the foreign investor.
The total amount of investment inflow from the investor immigration schemes is not transparent because only a handful of Member States disclosed their relevant data. However, we know that 4,8 billion euros arrived in Cyprus, 209 million to Ireland, 203 million to Malta and four billion euros to Portugal from the CBI/RBI programmes. The low estimate for the total amount of the study is
9,2 billion euros of investment.
In the case of personal taxation, the balance is not precise, because several residents and citizens are not tax residents of their new country. However, it is clear that the increasing number of High Net Worth Individuals or at least some of them who becomes tax residents as well, increase the amount of paid personal taxes significantly.
According to a report of the
European Commission, the investment generated from the immigration programmes of Malta reached 4,3% of the total GDP between 2014 and 2017. In Cyprus, the investments reached 2,5% of the GDP in 2017. Meanwhile, in Portugal, the Golden Visa scheme contributed 0,33 per cent of the GDP.
As most of the programmes have real estate purchase option, it worth to take a look of the schemes' impact on the national real estate sectors. In 2017, the number of property transactions increased by 43% in Cyprus. 26% of the buyers were foreigners, and it shows the importance of citizenship and residency programmes. In Portugal, the number of closed contracts grew with 18%, but in Malta, which owns the most successful citizenship and residency programmes among the EU Member States, the number of closed deals decreased by six per cent.
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