Golden visa programmes are likely to become more attractive for countries searching for a shot of foreign investment to recover from the COVID-19 crisis. But do they work? Kristin Surak writes that golden visas typically bring in no more than 0.3 per cent of GDP in revenues and aren’t large enough to make a difference in real estate markets, except for Greece. Citizens from other EU countries represent a much larger proportion of foreign investors and are more likely to destabilise real estate markets than the wealthy, often racially distinct “others” from outside Europe who sign up for golden visa programmes
