Column | What if we started selling Finnish passports?

in France Telegram founder arrested and released in August Pavel Durov39, has brought the 261-square-mile island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis to the world’s retinas.

After all, he is the 2003 sprint world champion by Kim Collins after perhaps the most famous kitschy

Durov bought Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship ten years ago when he announced that he could no longer stay in Russia because of the authorities. Although the Russian investigative media Vaznyje Istoorin Durov has still visited Russia more than 50 times in ten years.

Selling citizenship is common in small island states, whose passport can be obtained by investing a certain amount of money in the state or by buying real estate in the country. Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship can be obtained with a minimum investment of $250,000.

The benefits are great: in addition to tax benefits, you can fly freely to, for example, Finland to see the northern lights.

Also many EU countries trade their citizenship. Durov also has, among other things, a French passport, which he acquired in 2021. At some point during his travels, the Russian cosmopolitan has also found it useful to buy the citizenship of the United Arab Emirates.

The EU has tried to curb the “golden passports”, especially favored by the Russians, which are profitable for the states. In the years 2011–2019, more than 100,000 passports were issued for money in the EU region, the total price of which was more than 20 billion euros.

In particular, Malta, Cyprus and Bulgaria have been criticized at the EU level for selling citizenships.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, fewer and fewer states want to sell passports to Russians. Saint Kitts and Nevis has also refused to sell citizenship to Russians and Belarusians for a couple of years now.

However, citizens of many other countries are welcome, if only the money can be found. Saint Kitts and Nevis does not even require its new citizens to visit the country.

Golden ones the passports belong to the professor of world politics at the University of Helsinki Teivo Teivainen according to one example of how the sovereignty of the state and the global norm are often in conflict today.

The surrounding world may disapprove, but the states want to make their own decisions.

For example, Ireland’s tax breaks for large technology companies are causing a global aggravation, but Ireland makes its own tax solutions, which this year are bringing a surplus of more than 8.6 billion euros to the budget.

For comparison, the projected deficit of the Finnish government this year: 12.7 billion euros.

Portugal, on the other hand, has attracted wealthy pensioners and crypto-investors to its own little tax haven through various means, which others can only shake their fists at.

Trainingnature, healthcare are more abstract things than citizenship or a low tax rate. What if Finland, too, could patch up its leaking state finances with the passport trade?

The Finnish passport is the third best passport in the world based on the passport index of Henley & Partners, a Swiss law firm (and organizer of passport shops), because it allows visa-free access to 191 countries. For example, the passport of Saint Kitts and Nevis is only in 23rd place.

There would certainly be many people in the world who could invest millions of euros in Finland to get such a good passport.

At a price of five million, Finland would only need four desperate rich “world travelers” in order to cancel further cuts in the cultural sector! You could certainly find 14 “just a little suspicious” people in the world, whose passport purchases could cover the savings of vocational training.

Who would lose when these people probably wouldn’t even visit Finland?

Teivainen does not dismiss the idea. He thinks that selling passports could be a logical consequence in the discussion about useful and non-useful migration.

A foreigner buying citizenship would at least be a net payer.

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Teivo Teivainen suspects that a Finn views citizenship differently than a Caribbean person.

However, if the Finnish passport became a commodity, its value could decrease. In addition, there would be “side effects” of golden passports, such as suspicions of money laundering, which could tie up the police’s resources.

Teivainen suspects that a Finn views citizenship differently than a Caribbean person. Our great-grandfathers may not have fought for future generations to be able to sell citizenship.

“This kind of selling citizenship has not really taken off in Finland.”

Something However, Finland should come up with it, if we want foreign payers here in Pohjola’s wigs. Coming up with a differentiating factor is difficult, because other countries also know how to come up with good things about nature, schools and healthcare.

There is perhaps one, Teivainen, who has experienced a lot of the world, almost whispers.

Climate change.

When Southern Europe starts to get painfully hot in the summer, Finland offers a tolerable temperature, even though September is apparently a summer month here as well.

That we would welcome Spanish vacationers here to enjoy Suomi sangria or red wine vichy for a while before the world turns to ashes?

A pretty silly idea too. However, climate change is a bad thing.

Can the state make money from bad things, even if it benefits its own citizens? What would the rest of us think?