Here's one anyway:
ARTICLE:
For £150,000, You Can Buy Bulgarian-EU Citizenship
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2014/03/17/for-150000-you-can-buy-bulgarian-eu-citizenship/
Summary:
Summary:
So the article pretty much talks about the now, increasingly popular practice of buying citizenships to foreign countries. According to the article: "The EU financial crisis in recent years, however, has opened the visas-for-investment exchange to a far larger number of less wealthy foreign investors. Spain, Portugal, and Greece, to name a few, have been offering them to those with enough money to buy a second home abroad." It was this particular portion of the article that I found to be most interesting/disturbing.
Me talking to myself:
Granted that there are some additional legal hoops that some countries require potential buyers to jump through, this article is a testament to the severe lack of money circulating in the economies of some countries (particularly those in the EU). They need these quick influxes of cash to help keep themselves afloat. Although such an agenda is not directly stated, making citizenships available for purchase definitely seems to imply a cause for concern. This makes me think critically about the limitations of forming a European Union in the first place. Could it be that the negative effects of the EU are beginning to outweigh the positive effects? How desperate are these countries? The intergovernmental approach that the EU adopted seems less feasible as more news like this (about struggling economies) begins to surface. Perhaps the countries are running out of options...
KTKC!
ReplyDeleteKevin The Kid Cone!!!!
lol, hey man. i like the article and it's topic. Yes, there is a pose for concern when EU countries allow people with the means to buy a citizenship in that country allowing them to become legally european, holding a european country. However, the price of buying this citizenship is, as the title says "150,000 pounds" this is ALOT of money. and there is a possibility that the person buying this EU citizenship has stable and strong financial support. this can result in an addition of business and a wider range of goods or services and a slight increase in the GPD per capita of the country. so it is possible there can be negative impacts but is is also possible to there to be positive impacts.
It’s fascinating to see that these countries are willingly selling citizenships to foreign countries for money to promote foreign investments. If this idea were purposed 50 to even 30 years ago, I would think it would have been shoot down immediately due to the national pride that people had back then. But times have changed and there is a finical crisis. I wonder what the other legal loops are? I could imagine there would security issues if anyone was able to buy a citizenship to the EU. This is a good way to encourage foreign investments though.
ReplyDeleteKevin, do you think these things are cyclical at all? Is it possible that, much like any stock market, you have a rise and fall in cash in these countries and that this is just a low time in the greater economic scheme of things? Its not just that the EU is not doing well, many places are faced with a current down turn. Do you really believe these countries would be better off on their own as individual nations with individual currencies and singular economies?
ReplyDeleteI found this article very interesting. I find it crazy that people can buy citizenships now instead of having to go through the painstaking process of applying and you or certain relatives having to be living in the country to become a citizen. It has become so easy that rich foreigners might taking advantage of this opportunity. The EU may not be doing well but I believe that some locals from those countries would not agree on allowing people to buy citizenships. Its the same idea as people buying their drivers where they didn't prove that they earned it, but they still have it.
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