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Greece’s government’s decision to increase the minimum amount of investment for the Golden Visa Program in specific parts of the country from May this year has led wealthy foreign investors to run making investments.
Previously, the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, revealed that the minimum amount of investment for the Residency by Investment Scheme in some parts of the country would increase from 250,000 to a total of 500,000 euros, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
Such a decision led to a sharp increase in the number of applications for the Golden Visa Scheme. The Ministry of Migration and Asylum said that 2,767 new golden visas were issued last year, or a significant increase compared to the 1,525 registered in 2021.
Greece’s Golden Visa scheme introduced in 2014 by the country’s government allows wealthy foreign nationals to acquire residency, provided they make a financial investment of at least 250,000 euros and meet specific conditions, thus granting a five-year residence permit that can be renewed.
The data provided by the Ministry revealed that since it was launched until the end of last year, 62.8 per cent of the residence permits, or 6,159 golden visas were granted to nationals from China.
In addition to Chinese nationals, citizens from the following countries also benefited the most from Greece’s Golden Visa Program: Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and the United Kingdom.
A report provided by a Greek think tank, Eteron, revealed that the program has a downside to it related to the effect on real estate prices.
“There is an acknowledgement of the adverse impact of these investment schemes on the housing market; increasing the threshold without applying any other criteria may prove insufficient,” it noted, according to Balkan Insight report.
Despite the fact that Greece’s Golden visa scheme is among Europe’s favourite schemes, bringing significant contributions to the country’s economy, it was often criticized for being related to many unlawful schemes such as corruption, tax evasion and money laundering.
The European Union has often criticized all European countries that run golden visas programs to abolish them as soon as possible.
Recently, Portugal announced that it officially terminated its Residency by Investment scheme, following the surge in home prices, despite the fact that Portugal’s golden visa scheme was also among the most favourite programs of this kind.
Following reports of being involved in many unlawful affairs, authorities in Ireland also ended their Immigrant Investor Scheme, which is similar to the Golden visa program.
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