When you see an interesting opportunity, you have to grab it fast especially as far as foreign citizenship is concerned. Over recent years, Montenegro, Moldova, Bulgaria, Comoros, and Cyprus have closed their citizenship-by-investment programs. The Caribbean countries administering such programs (St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St Lucia, and Grenada) have doubled the prices. Now the authorities of Vanuatu have announced the introduction of a new requirement. In particular, foreigners applying for citizenship of Vanuatu will have to pay personal visits to the country.
Obviously, the new requirement is going to make the process of obtaining Vanuatu citizenship more complicated. Below we discuss the reasons why this requirement has been introduced.
Rules toughen
The Vanuatu Citizenship Commission is responsible for monitoring the process of issuing ‘golden passports’ to foreigners. On August 7, 2024, it sent a letter announcing change of rules to the licensed immigration agents. In particular, the letter says the following:
“…everyone who wishes to apply for Vanuatu passports MUST travel to Vanuatu to apply in person. Hence, the new Passport System requires physical appearance before Immigration and Passport officials for registration of biometric data and facial recognition…”
The new requirement applies to those foreigners who are in the middle of the application process as well as those whose applications for Vanuatu citizenship by investment have already been approved.
The opportunity to apply for Vanuatu citizenship remotely is going to become unavailable on August 31, 2024. After the date, all foreigners wishing to obtain passports of Vanuatu in exchange for investments will have to visit the country in person.
Previously, if an application for citizenship of Vanuatu had been approved, the applicant only had to supply passport-size photographs without the need to travel to Vanuatu.
The desire to please Brussels and other reasons for new requirements
The official reason for introducing the personal visit requirement is the intention to make Vanuatu passports compliant with the security standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). As Vanuatu is a member of the Organization, it has to adapt its legislation to the new international rules to allow its citizens to avoid problems when crossing national borders.
In particular, all countries have to issue passports with electronic microchips that contain personal data of the passport holder. In accordance with the ICAO standards, a passport of Vanuatu has an electronic chip with biometric information and this information can be collected only on a personal visit.
However, the desire to comply with the international standards is not the only reason for toughening the rules. The decision of the Vanuatu authorities to introduce a personal visit requirement was made two months after the European Commission proposed turning a temporary suspension of visa-free arrangements between Vanuatu and the Schengen zone into a permanent one. Let us remind you that Brussels only temporarily suspended the visa-free arrangements with Vanuatu two years ago.
The new proposal was published at the official website of the Commission on May 31, 2024 and it has not been approved yet. While the proposal is under consideration, the temporary suspension period has been extended from August 3, 2024 to February 3, 2025. Initially, the visa sanctions were introduced in May 2022 when the EU officials arrived at the conclusion that the Vanuatu economic citizenship program posed threats to the security of the EU as a whole and each member state in particular.
The opportunity to obtain a passport of Vanuatu remotely was indicated as a source of risk. As a result, a visa suspension mechanism was employed in accordance with Article 8 of the Visa Regulation.
European officials were concerned with the following particular facts:
- Issuance of Vanuatu passports to a large number of foreigners who would have to apply for EU visas if they did not have passports of Vanuatu (more than 10,000 cases between 2015 and 2021) and a small number of application rejections;
- Lack of requirement to live in Vanuatu or even visit the country and lack of requirement to establish personal contacts with the Vanuatu authorities;
- Lack of personal interview requirement, which disallows carrying out proper personal identification procedures and verifying the information supplied by the applicant;
- Active promotion of the economic citizenship scheme as a way to avoid applying for a Schengen visa and get visa-free access to the EU;
- Fast processing of applications for citizenship, which is incompatible with carrying out proper security checks and acquiring sufficient information from the countries of the applicants’ origin;
- Weak legislation governing name change, which allows easily ‘masking’ the person’s identity.
European officials also noted that Vanuatu was classified by the OECD as a high-risk country as far as the Common Reporting Standards (CRS) were concerned. It offered too many opportunities for tax evasion and money laundering.
The decision of the EU authorities to suspend visa-free access to the Schengen zone for citizens of Vanuatu had a negative impact on the number of applicants for citizenship of this South Pacific country. The situation worsened even more when Great Britain, Ireland, and Switzerland joined the sanctions. However, it is too early to claim that the Vanuatu economic citizenship program has lost its attractiveness completely. The program continues to bring revenues thanks to applicants from sanctioned countries.
Independent experts’ opinions and comments
Licensed immigration agents in Vanuatu note that the lack of biometric data in Vanuatu passports was the main concern for the official Brussels. The new regulation addresses this concern and demonstrates Vanuatu’s commitment to maintaining high security standards as far as granting economic citizenship is concerned.
Experts are sure that these measures will allow Vanuatu to restore its position in the international community and allow the country to regain visa-free access to the EU.
They emphasize that the new rules will allow establishing a ‘genuine link’ between the economic citizen and the authorities of Vanuatu: they are going to meet each other in person. Lack of a ‘genuine link’ has made the EU officials push Moldova, Bulgaria, and Montenegro to close their citizenship-by-investment programs.
It is also expected that the arrival of wealthy foreigners to Vanuatu will contribute to the development of the tourist industry, which is something that the country needs badly.
Some analysts point out potential problems that the personal visit requirement is going to bring. Citizens of many countries need visas to enter Vanuatu. Besides, direct flights go to Vanuatu from very few countries. Therefore, some candidates for citizenship of Vanuatu are going to find it hard to reach the country. In view of this fact, experts hope that the Vanuatu authorities will make it possible for foreigners to submit their biometric data in other jurisdictions such as Dubai or Hong Kong, for example.
When the Vanuatu immigration agents received the Letter from the authorities mentioned above, many of them requested personal meetings with the officers of the Citizenship Commission. They would like to discuss possible alternative solutions for those applicants for citizenship who would find it hard to get to Vanuatu. Several alternatives are under consideration including the opportunity to pick the passport from a consulate of Vanuatu in a foreign country. This practice is popular with many Caribbean states that issue passports to foreign investors.
