Golden Visa Greece: investments, development, news

The Pandemic Negatively Affects the Greek Golden Visa in the Second Quarter, but Improvement is Expected in the Third.

New measures for the Greek Golden Visa will allow applications to be submitted remotely and are expected to increase their volume in the third quarter. However, they were not implemented in time to maintain the numbers in the second quarter.

An Important Note on Greek Statistics:

At Garant.in, we regularly monitor Greek Golden Visa statistics since 2017, and we've noticed that the annual figures for main applicants, dependents, and the number of investors from each country are frequently subject to revisions.

Specifically, by the end of May, the total number of main applicants approved in 2019 was reported as 6,304. This number has now been revised upward to 7,449. Similar adjustments have been made for all previous years. It seems that the historical data changes with each reporting period, but we must report the figures published by official sources.

Echoes of the Icarus Story

A force majeure event stalled the Greek Golden Visa in 2020 after an almost exponential upward trajectory since 2017. In the first half of the year, the number of approved main applicants increased by 376 — only 11% of the total for 2019 (or 22% on an annualized basis). We believe that the second quarter will be challenging due to border closures and lockdowns for a program dominated by China.

Regulatory barriers requiring in-person meetings and visits to Greece prevent investors from applying. Recognizing this, the Greek government has taken several important steps to allow investors to participate in the program remotely, notably by permitting them to submit applications through a power of attorney. This series of measures will ensure real revenue for Greece in the third quarter but will take effect too late to save the second quarter’s statistics.

The cumulative number of approved main applicants since 2013 currently stands at 7,825, with the number of additional family members reaching 15,536. Chinese applicants remain the alpha and omega of the Greek Golden Visa, currently making up 73% of the total. In 2020, China alone accounted for at least 85% of applicants.

Greece’s 2020 Performance Contrasts Sharply with Portugal’s, Which Has Seized a Significant Share of the Greek Market During the Pandemic.

While in Greece, application volumes during the crisis fell to a three-year low, Portugal's approved applications reached a record high in May, with June being the second-best month of 2020.

The differences in the dynamics of the two countries are explained not so much by fundamental factors but by differences in levels of digital technology and procedural efficiency, where Portugal has an advantage. After similar modernization measures are implemented in Greece, Portugal's competitive advantage is likely to diminish somewhat in the coming months.

Inefficient Bureaucrats Cost Greece Billions in Lost Golden Visa Revenue

Greek residents involved in investment practices say that revenue from the program could be more than twice its current level if only the country’s decentralized authorities were not so inefficient.

Golden Visa lawyers, speaking to the newspaper "Kathimerini," say that immigration service staff at decentralized authorities, with whom they interact daily, often behave in a bureaucratic, inefficient manner that actually costs Greece billions in lost investments. Sometimes, experts say, officials are willing to help expedite Golden Visa applications, but more often than not, the mentality they have to deal with seems long outdated.

At the immigration office in Piraeus, one of the most popular destinations for residency investors, the earliest available appointments are scheduled for March 2021, 14 months away. Much of the delay is due to the decentralized authorities’ responsibility to serve other categories of immigrants; in particular, a large and growing number of asylum seekers overloads the bureaucratic workload.

IMI has previously reported on how long wait times are forcing lawyers to take their clients to provincial immigration offices to avoid the queues. Service providers are now calling on decentralized authorities to open offices exclusively for processing Golden Visa applications.

The Greek government last year issued a mandate allowing Golden Visa investors to apply at any decentralized immigration office in the country, not just the office belonging to the region in which they invested. Portugal, which faced a similar problem in 2017, successfully implemented a decentralized processing procedure that effectively reduced the backlog from over 4,000 applications to just a few hundred.

Since the program's inception, Greece has attracted about 2 billion euros through the program, approximately 1.4 billion euros of which came in the last two years alone. The country's civil service was seemingly unprepared for the enormous and sudden popularity of the program, resulting in missed out on much-needed investment.

Property Owners Worried About Being Unable to Visit New Homes in Greece and Receive Their Golden Visas

Many bought eligible homes in 2019 and were on the verge of finalizing their residency before the outbreak. Now, they are out 250,000 euros and cannot enter Greece.

At least 120 Chinese families who invested in Greek real estate under the Golden Visa application process are still waiting for their files to be approved. They cannot access pending documents or enroll their children in Greek schools as planned.

Currently, Greece only allows entry to citizens of all EU/EEA countries with a negative PCR test for travelers from Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, and Sweden, as well as citizens from the 11 non-European countries listed below:

• Australia
• Georgia
• Japan
• Canada
• New Zealand
• South Korea
• Rwanda
• Uruguay
• Thailand
• Tunisia
• China

Chinese citizens will be allowed to enter Greece only if the Chinese government, in return, allows EU citizens to enter China, which is currently still not permitted.

The Confederation has sent letters on this issue to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Migration Policy, as well as to the Greek consulates in China and the Chinese embassy in Athens.

But Chinese investors are far from the only group of Golden Visa applicants affected by the border closures.

More than 20 applicants, mostly from Turkey, are currently in the process of finalizing their Golden Visas, many of whom have already purchased their real estate but cannot enter Greece.

They are asking why they can't just provide a negative PCR test like everyone else and then cross the border into Greece. Their frustration is understandable. Demand from Turkey has noticeably increased in recent months — an observation we link to the authoritarian turn in Turkish politics over the past year.

The processing time for Greek Golden Visas before the pandemic averaged 5-6 months, although processing times in some regional immigration offices were often much faster. Although the processing offices remain fully operational, most staff are still working from home.

We all know what working from home means for Greek bureaucrats. The situation is such that data processing now takes significantly longer than before the pandemic.

However, there are reasons for optimism: all stakeholders in the Greek Golden Visa market are urging the Greek government to resolve the deadlock. We expect feedback from the Ministry of Interior by the end of this week.

The calls from concerned companies and the Confederation are unlikely to go unnoticed. The current administration, in power for just over a year, has prioritized the program and shown surprising efficiency in reducing bureaucratic red tape for a scheme they believe plays a key role in strengthening Greece's economy.