What Is Wrong with Selling Citizenship? It Corrupts Democracy!

Abstract

Citizenship has two faces: one directed towards other states, the other one directed towards citizens inside the polity. The policy of selling EU passports to investors disfigures both faces. Members states who do so cash in on the added value of EU citizenship created by all the member states jointly rather than by themselves. The global inequality of birthright citizenships will be exacerbated instead of diminished if the most valuable citizenships are sold to wealthy elites. Internally, selling citizenship corrupts democracy in a similar way as vote-buying and once again links the presumptively equal status of citizenship to social class, just as income tests for naturalisation do. As a union of democracies, the EU must be concerned when democracy is corrupted by the rule of money in any of its member states.