🇬🇧Retroactive Reform: What Happens to Your Status When a Programme Closes

Concept: programme risk, status risk and end-goal risk

When an investment programme is shut down, three different assets catch fire at once, and each of them is protected differently. The first is the ability to apply at all: it can disappear abruptly; any replacement route must be assessed on its own terms. The second is the residence permit already issued: its survival depends on transitional provisions and the holder's continued eligibility. Closing intake and individually reviewing or revoking a status are separate legal acts.

The third is the end goal the whole exercise was built around — permanent residence or a passport in N years' time. That third asset is the one that breaks most often, and it breaks quietly: the card is in hand, the permit renews on schedule, and the run to citizenship turns from five years into ten.

The cases below distinguish closure of intake, changes to investment conditions, reforms to nationality law, individual deprivation and loss of travel privileges. Alongside the existing comparisons, they cover the Netherlands, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Latvia, Hungary, Vanuatu and the five Eastern Caribbean CBI states.

The key parameters: what in this chain is protected and what is not.

Five closure scenarios and what each one does to your status

The word "closure" covers different legal events. 1. Intake stops — no new applications are accepted; the fate of pending cases and issued statuses follows the applicable transitional rules, which may preserve applications or terminate them. 2. Parameters change — eligible assets, thresholds or continuing conditions change; a transition exists only to the extent the law provides one. 3. The end goal changes — the residence permit and the later route to permanent residence or nationality are governed separately. 4. A court finds a scheme unlawful — the state must bring its rules into compliance, as in Malta after C-181/23; this does not itself decide every holder's nationality. 5. Travel privileges are lost — a destination country changes entry requirements, as the EU did for Vanuatu, without thereby deciding that person's citizenship.

These are the scenario numbers used in the tables. I marks an additional risk of individual deprivation or cancellation on national legal grounds. It can coexist with any of scenarios 1–5: closure, a transition and individual review are separate questions. A future deadline or a diplomatic request is labelled as such, rather than presented as an event already completed.

Only one practical conclusion follows from this taxonomy: when you buy a status, you are not buying a "programme" but a specific bundle of rights of very different durability. The right to file, the right to retain and renew an issued status, and the route to citizenship each need their own legal basis. A transition protecting an existing card does not freeze nationality law or exclude individual revocation.

Grandfathering: written into the statute, or left as a promise

The benchmark for a properly drafted transitional regime is Spanish. The golden visa was abolished by Ley Orgánica 1/2025 of 2 January 2025 on the efficiency of the public justice service: it stripped articles 63 to 67 of Ley 14/2013 of their content and deferred entry into force by three months, to 3 April 2025. The transition is spelled out across all three layers at once.

1. Applications filed before 3 April 2025 are decided under the former rules.
2. Visas and permits valid on that date keep their force for their full term.
3. Renewals are assessed under the rules in effect on the date of the original authorisation.

This transition protects the specified visas, permits and renewals. It does not freeze the separate requirements for long-term residence or nationality, and it is not immunity from withdrawal on an individual legal ground.

The Netherlands applied the same three-layer construction in more compact form: the Besluit of 9 April 2024 (Stb. 2024, No. 83) struck the words "of vermogende vreemdeling" from article 3.4(1)(b) of the Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000, and the route for wealthy foreign nationals closed on 17 April 2024. Article IV of the same instrument preserved the former law for decisions taken before that date, for extensions of their validity and for applications filed before it; the IND confirms that an extension is assessed against the requirements in force before the abolition.

The motive, unlike the Spanish and Portuguese ones, was not housing: WBV 2024/10 (Stcrt. 2024, No. 13488) points to the long-running EU debate on the risk of criminal activity, money laundering above all.

A narrower transition may protect only a particular group or procedural stage. Its scope must be checked in the enacted text and the relevant national case law. Preserving an investment residence permit does not, by itself, preserve the nationality rules that the holder hoped to use later.

The tables compare the effects of reform on issued statuses, pending cases and future goals. “Preserved” describes protection against the specified programme reform, subject to continued eligibility; it does not mean permanent immunity from individual cancellation. A citizenship grant, a residence permit and a visa exemption are different rights.

Latvia's transition is conditional. Under paragraph 10, a repeat property or subordinated-debt permit can run for up to five years if the prior permit is still valid at application, the investment continues to qualify, no listed refusal ground applies, and the prescribed state payment is made. The migration authority confirms that the new law took effect on 15 September 2026. The 31 December 2027 integration date is a different provision.

Bulgaria's closure did not erase existing compliance duties. The 2022 transitional provisions retain notification and investment obligations for affected naturalised investors; non-compliance can ground annulment. This must be separated from the termination of pending applications and from other residence routes.

The two matrices show why preserving an issued status and preserving the route to a passport require separate checks. A preservation entry does not rule out individual deprivation under the issuing state's law.

Closures with a long tail: Ireland and the United Kingdom

Ireland: an inventory still being worked through in its third year

The Irish government closed the Immigrant Investor Programme on 15 February 2023 — with no transition window for new applications, but with an undertaking to process those already filed. The Immigration Service published its order of play for the inventory: files are sorted into priority categories, and the rest, in the official formulation, are "expected to take a number of years" to reach a final decision.

The inventory on the closure date ran to 3,127 applications and over two billion euro of declared investment; approvals ran to 251 in 2023, 538 in 2024 and 208 in the first half of 2025, and across 2023 to June 2025 in total 1,002 applications were approved and 890 refused or withdrawn (2024 was the strongest year in the programme's history), yet the queue is still measured in years.

The fact that matters to a client is this: closing the programme did not void the application already filed, but it did make the decision timeline unforecastable and the money frozen for an indefinite period.

The United Kingdom: a closure with a six-year timetable attached

The Tier 1 (Investor) route closed to new applicants on 17 February 2022. What the Home Office then did is what almost nobody does: it published a calendar of extinction — with separate, earlier deadlines for holders whose first visa was granted on or before 28 March 2019 and who held their qualifying investment in government bonds.

This is a rare example of honest design — the status holder knew the exact dates in advance and could plan around them, and the general extension window has now shut.

Even so the risk is not exhausted: in parallel the United Kingdom is consulting on an earned settlement reform, opened in November 2025 and closed on 12 February 2026, contemplating a baseline of ten years to settlement with accelerated tracks tied to income, and by design reaching people already in the country who have not yet obtained ILR. As of August 2026 no draft Immigration Rules have been published and the existing five- and ten-year routes continue to operate.

Alternative British routes for those who do not need an investor entry are set out in the piece on the Global Talent visa.

When a court closes the programme: Malta and Case C-181/23

Malta illustrates a reform driven by a judgment at EU level. On 29 April 2025 the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in Case C-181/23 European Commission v Republic of Malta: the Maltese scheme of naturalisation in exchange for predetermined payments was held to breach Article 20 TFEU read together with Article 4(3) TEU. The Court's reasoning is that Union citizenship cannot be the object of a commercial transaction, and that an applicant's formal presence in the country on two occasions — biometrics and the oath — does not create the "special relationship of solidarity and good faith" on which mutual recognition of nationality between member states rests.

What the judgment did not do

The judgment in C-181/23 found the scheme incompatible with EU law; it did not itself decide individual deprivation cases. Nationality remains a national competence exercised consistently with EU law, and existing grants are not immune from national deprivation grounds. Malta subsequently changed its legislation: the Maltese Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Act XXI of 2025), published in the Government Gazette on 24 July 2025, repealed naturalisation by investment and replaced it with naturalisation for exceptional merit, with no fixed price tag, an evaluation board and categories such as entrepreneurs, scientists, athletes and figures from the arts.

For the market this is an inflection point: the Court's reasoning rules out any return to "payment in exchange for EU citizenship" as a model, not merely the Maltese version of it. The legal routes that remain are surveyed in the piece on routes to EU citizenship.

Portugal: a reform that leaves the residence permit alone and pushes the passport away

The most instructive case of 2026. Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 of 18 May 2026 rewrote Nationality Law No. 37/81 and entered into force the day after publication, on 19 May 2026. The naturalisation period rose from five years to seven for nationals of the Portuguese-speaking community and the European Union, and to ten for everyone else. The second blow is quieter and hurts more: the clock now starts on the date the first residence permit is issued. Until then Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2024 of 5 March 2024 counted the period from the moment the residence application was filed — and given the multi-year backlogs at the AIMA agency, the gap between the two starting points reaches two to three years for a real investor.

Who the transitional rule protected

Article 7 of Lei Orgânica 1/2026 preserves the former law for administrative nationality proceedings pending when the statute entered into force on 19 May 2026. Holding a golden visa without a pending nationality proceeding is not the same protected fact. The applicable residence period and counting rule must be checked for the person's nationality and record; holding an investment permit alone does not freeze future naturalisation law.

In July 2026 a group of 1,260 investors filed a collective petition with the Ombudsman (Provedora de Justiça) asking her to refer the law to the Constitutional Court and to secure transitional protection; representatives of the group said they were prepared to go to court in September 2026 and put the potential class at around two thousand participants. As of 13 August 2026 the law is in force, no subsequent review of it has been referred to the Constitutional Court, and the government still has time to issue implementing regulations that could clarify how previously accrued residence is credited.

Ruling 1133/2025: what the Court protected and what it refused to protect

The narrowness of that transitional rule is not legislative carelessness but a frame already tested by the Constitutional Court before promulgation. Decree No. 17/XVII went to the President on 11 November 2025, and a group of fifty members of parliament sought preventive review under Article 278, paras. 4 and 6 of the Constitution.

By ruling No. 1133/2025 of 15 December 2025 (case No. 1383/25) the Court held four norms unconstitutional, among them — unanimously, and solely under Article 2 of the Constitution — the norm derived from article 7, paras. 3 and 4 of the decree.

Para. 3 made the grant of applications already filed conditional on the requirements of the former text having been satisfied at the date of filing, while para. 4 declared that rule interpretative, so that under article 13(1) of the Civil Code it would fold back into the statute it construed and reach files still open.

The Court reasoned that the moment of filing and the moment of decision do not coincide, and that on settled Supreme Administrative Court authority a requirement satisfied while the proceeding is pending still counts. It supplies the direct example itself: article 15(4) of Law 37/81 allowed the time spent waiting for a residence decision to be credited towards the five years, and applicants filed relying on exactly that.

The second half of the ruling matters more to card holders than the first: paras. 1 and 2 of article 7 were not held unconstitutional, and the argument that protection must reach beyond the circle of open proceedings was rejected outright — the expectations of a person whose proceeding has not commenced by the date the statute enters into force could "never carry such prominence" as to oblige the legislature to do more than apply the law in force when the proceeding begins.

Paras. 3 and 4 of article 7 are absent from the final text: the statute was approved on 1 April, promulgated on 3 May and published on 18 May 2026.

The United States: grandfathering written into the statute, and it expires on 30 September 2026

EB-5 contains express statutory protection against a lapse of the regional centre programme. The 2022 reform (the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act) introduced a clause under which Form I-526 and I-526E petitions properly filed and accepted by the agency on or before 30 September 2026 continue to be adjudicated even if Congress does not reauthorise the regional centre programme. Approval may come later — what carries legal weight is the fact of timely filing. A separate and later date is 30 September 2027: that is how long the current authorisation of the regional centre programme runs. The difference is fundamental: a petition filed on 1 October 2026 lands inside a functioning programme, but without the insurance policy against a lapse.

On 2 July 2026 the Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule implementing the RIA (comments accepted until 31 August 2026). The regulator states plainly that it intends to apply the new provisions prospectively — to petitions filed on or after the effective date, with limited exceptions — and to apply to petitions filed before 15 March 2022 the earlier text of 8 CFR 204.6 as it stood on 20 November 2019. The minimum amounts in the draft are held at their statutory levels — $800,000 for targeted employment areas and infrastructure projects and $1,050,000 for everything else — while the RIA itself provides for periodic inflation indexation of the thresholds. The entry mechanics are covered in the review of the EB-5 visa.

The Caribbean: not revocation of status, but the removal of its content

An EU travel restriction does not itself revoke nationality. Regulation (EU) 2025/2441 expressly covers investor citizenship without a genuine link: the initial suspension lasts twelve months, followed, if the statutory conditions are met, by a further twenty-four months. Article 8f(2)'s narrow-category exception concerns other grounds, not the investor-citizenship ground.

The Commission's next step, on 19 December 2025, was the eighth report under the visa suspension mechanism, which treats five Caribbean states together — Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia.

Filings fell year on year, and every refusal rate the report does give stays below 7%.

The December 2025 report calls for vetting pending discontinuation, without naming a phase-out date. Later, Antigua and Barbuda reported a June 2026 Commission request to phase out the five programmes by 1 June 2028. This is a reported request, not an enacted national closure or an EU visa-suspension decision.

The scope and effective date of any travel restriction depend on the adopted act. Prior lawful acquisition of citizenship does not by itself exempt its holder from a later visa requirement.

What happens to a passport already issued

The practical answer splits into three levels, and they should not be confused.

Citizenship. An EU visa measure or a foreign entry restriction is not a national decision depriving a person of citizenship. Deprivation depends on the issuing state's grounds and procedure; those grounds must not be reduced to fraud alone. Cyprus and Bulgaria illustrate why investment compliance and other statutory grounds also need checking.

Cyprus illustrates the separate risk of individual deprivation after a programme closes: after the programme closed in November 2020, the inquiry led by former Supreme Court president Myron Nicolatos found that 53% of the 6,779 citizenships granted between 2007 and August 2020 failed to meet the statutory requirements, and the Interior Ministry's announcement of 12 September 2025 distinguishes decisions to deprive 360 people of citizenship — 101 investors and 259 family members — from 112 completed procedures with documents cancelled. These are separate stages in that historical snapshot, not 360 completed revocations or a current total.

Article 113 of Cyprus's Civil Registry Law covers fraud, specified criminal and sanctions grounds, and continuing non-compliance with naturalisation conditions; several grounds have ten-year limits. It can also affect derivative family grants. The statutory process includes notice of the grounds and sixty days to approach the independent committee. The exact ground, time limit and procedure must be assessed individually.

Visa-free access. In December 2024 the EU removed Vanuatu from the visa-exempt list, following earlier suspension. That changed travel requirements; it was not a decision on national citizenship. Article 8e(3) permits document categories and additional criteria: the implementing act determines coverage, which need not be limited to investment citizens.

Visa history and reputational trail. The US restrictions do not cancel previously issued visas automatically, but the shortened validity in the reciprocity schedules applies on the next issuance, and a Caribbean passport as a second document now draws additional questions from consular officers and banks more often: for a compliance function, a second citizenship bought without relocation is a standard trigger for source-of-funds enquiries.

The mechanics of a suspension, its timings and the Vanuatu precedent are set out in the piece on the EU visa suspension mechanism; the EU's demands on the five with a 2028 horizon, and the American track, sit in the review of citizenship by investment.

Early warning signs: what is visible 6 to 18 months ahead

Across the cases examined, the warning signals repeat. First, the programme migrates onto the agenda of the housing or budget ministry rather than the immigration one: the Spanish abolition arrived inside a justice statute, the Portuguese removal of real estate in 2023 inside the "Mais Habitação" package, and in both the trigger was housing affordability, not security.

Second, a critical report from a supranational body, or infringement proceedings: roughly two years passed between the Commission's action against Malta and the judgment, and about the same between the reports on the Caribbean schemes and the amendment of the regulation. Third, a sharp rise in filings in the quarter before an announcement: the market usually learns of a pending change before the official statement, and the surge itself becomes a signal. Fourth, processing paralysis — the queue grows, timelines slip, the agency stops publishing statistics. Fifth, a change of government with migration in the manifesto.

Worth holding separately in mind: closing the entry programme and reforming the nationality law are two independent events, and the second is almost never announced alongside the first. Portugal removed property purchase from the golden visa in October 2023 and only two and a half years later rewrote the naturalisation periods.

Greece raised its thresholds by Article 64 of Law 5100/2024 (Government Gazette Α΄ 49 of 5 April 2024): the zonal thresholds of EUR 800,000 and EUR 400,000 have applied since 5 April 2024, the date the law was published and the article entered into force.

The transitional rule in Article 64(4) opened a window on terms of full payment, a 10% deposit or a preliminary contract by 31 August 2024 and completion of the transaction by 31 December 2024, or, where the property was substituted, no later than 30 April 2025; for purchases from 1 September 2024 no transitional relief exists at all. Permits already issued kept the former regime. Both tracks need watching at the same time.

What a status holder should do when a reform is announced

The sequence is not the intuitive one. First, fix the applicable version of the law: find the transitional provision in the text and work out which legal fact it attaches to (filing, payment, issuance of the card, the date of the first authorisation). Second, do not renew earlier than it pays to — the Spanish construction ties the applicable law to the date of the original authorisation rather than the date of renewal, so filing early improves nothing.

Third, where the reform touches the end goal, check whether an application for permanent residence or citizenship can be lodged before entry into force even in formal terms: the Portuguese transitional rule protected proceedings actually commenced, not the right to commence them. Fourth, preserve a complete evidentiary trail of presence and investment — on a change of regime the burden of proving accrued time falls on the applicant.

Fifth, do not build the plan on a single status. Experience shows that a fallback entry — a second residence under a different regime, or citizenship by descent — costs less than litigating a broken plan back into shape.

A separate note for applicants holding a Russian passport, and one that repays attention even from readers with no Russian connection, because it illustrates a mechanism available to any government: on top of the ordinary reform risk sits the risk of a nationality filter, whereby a formally open programme is closed to one category of applicant administratively, without any change in the law. That layer is unpacked in the piece on Russian applicants in investment migration.

Questions and answers