Leaders are Malta, Cyprus, and Austria. The best residence and citizenship by investment programs were identified by Henley & Partners. The rankings included countries from Europe, the Caribbean, North America, and Asia. Citizenship by investment programs are a short and simplified way to obtain a full passport of another country without prior long-term residence or even a visit. In 2019, a new citizenship program of Montenegro was launched. The country is not yet a member of the EU, but the program is already in demand thanks to low investment requirements (from 250,000 euros) and short application processing times. Citizenship can be obtained in just 3 months. At the beginning of 2020, the first application was approved for Montenegrin citizenship. For example, to become a citizen of Cyprus, it is necessary to invest at least 2.15 million euros in the country. And to obtain Maltese citizenship, investments of from 1 million euros are required. At the same time, the application processing time will be from 14 to 18 months. Official EU investment citizenship programs operate only in Cyprus, Malta, and Austria. Citizenship of these countries allows you to live and work in any EU country without any restrictions.
The following criteria were used to analyze investment citizenship programs: reputation, quality of life, visa-free entry, application processing time and information processing quality, compliance, investment requirements, need to reside in the country, ability to move to other countries, need to visit the country, transparency of the procedure. Henley & Partners publishes rankings of official residence and citizenship by investment programs, as well as research on these programs, which represents the most complete systematic analysis and comparative assessment of the main options for obtaining residence and citizenship by investment. Independent experts, investors, and public figures from different countries take part in creating the rankings. For each criterion, experts assign countries points (from 0 to 10), after which the results are summed.