Finance Minister Edward Scicluna claimed no one watched his address to a European Parliament committee last month and his words were “twisted”, but admitted the marketing of the citizenship scheme had been “crude”.
“What happened is that this famous hearing that I had in the European Parliament, no one saw it and my words are being twisted,” he told Times of Malta.
The video clip of his December 5 presentation in front of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee had gone viral online.
The government’s final revised scheme issued on December 24 did not conform to Prof. Scicluna’s explanations to the committee that the capping of the revised citizenship scheme would be about 50 applicants per year and that the scheme would include a residency clause. This is the main bone of contention for the Opposition.
The Finance Minister yesterday said he was being misquoted. “I never said that the scheme will have a capping of 50 per year. I said, if you look at it carefully, it would be good to have a capping ... that there won’t be scaremongering that the EU will be flooded by thousands and thousands, and I gave an example that it could be a capping of 50 per year... I mentioned 50 as an example,” he said. On December 5, he had told the committee: “The suggestion will be taken that there will be a capping say, with say not more than 50 a year that is being seriously considered and you will see it.”
The government has instead inserted a capping of 1,800 citizenships – not including family members of main beneficiaries – over five years.
Prof Scicluna had also assured the committee that the revised scheme will include “more bonding” telling the MEPs questioning him: “The person will come to Malta, will reside in Malta and ideally also have some property in Malta as well.”
In the subsequent revision the government added a €500,000 investment in property and government stock to the €650,000 cash contribution, but no residency clause.
Prof Scicluna claimed that during the committee session he had just been giving “suggestions” and “ideas” of “possible criteria” rather than talking about the government’s concrete plans. The residency clause, he said, was not included due to Malta’s size.
“Malta is a small country and the government found that it would not be beneficial to the country if it had to be compulsory to reside in Malta,” he said.
He said that his committee address had been “to defend the scheme” because the way “it was transmitted in the EP, was wrong”, admitting that the way the government had presented the scheme had been “crude”.
“It’s the most possible crude way you can do it, everyone is scandalised if they hear ‘sale of passport’”.
The wealth fund aspect of the scheme had not been emphasised enough and the focus had been on the negative parts.
He stressed that the budget can still subsist without this scheme. “But the country, for its own development, this is a wealth fund – whoever contributes will be given a recognition, not a Ġieħ ir-Repubblika but a citizenship,” he said.
If he were an MEP and he heard that Malta was selling passports, he would have said: “For goodness sake, I wouldn’t expect that from Malta.” “But it wasn’t like that. It came out like that, very unfortunate and it’s being corrected.”
According to Prof Scicluna, if the scheme had to be scrapped, there won’t be a hike in taxes because this was just a “token in the budget”.
This contrasts with the declaration of Home Affairs Minister on TimesTalk, who had questioned where the money would come from if the programme were to be stopped and hinted at the introduction of new taxes.
Prof Scicluna said that he had just arrived from three days at the European Parliament. “They all spoke to me and no one mentioned the citizenship...it’s not as tragic as we are imagining it.”