If your idea of Spain is eating paella, dancing flamenco, and improving your Spanish, Catalonia might surprise you.
28.07.2024 - 00:36 / euronews.com
Getting the right to live and work in another country can be a long and difficult process. But that’s not always the case for those with money to spend.
Golden visas offer the opportunity for wealthy people to essentially ‘buy’ the right to residency - sometimes without even having to live in the country.
And their popularity in the European Union is growing as people look to move away from political decisions such as Brexit that may limit their rights.
With the unsettled political and social environment in the US in recent years, applications for golden visas from Americans were also projected to increase.
But golden visas are now gradually being phased out across Europe. Portugal amended its scheme in October, removing real estate investment as a basis for golden visa applications in the hope of reducing property speculation.
The Netherlands followed suit, ending its golden visa scheme in January 2024.
Earlier this year, Spain also said it would abolish golden visas for those who invest in real estate - but the promise is yet to materialise. Progress was hinted at this week, when the government announced it plans to get rid of the visa for all types of investment.
So what exactly are these golden visa schemes and why has the EU raised questions about their safety in recent years?
Residence by investment schemes, otherwise known as ‘golden visas’, offer people the chance to get a residency permit for a country by purchasing a house there or making a large investment or donation.
Any applicants must be over the age of 18, have a clean criminal record and have sufficient funds to make the required investment.
There are also golden passports, known officially as citizenship by investment programs, that allow foreigners to gain citizenship using the same means.
For countries in the EU, this also means gaining access to many of the benefits of being a resident of the bloc - including free movement between countries.
In 2022, the European Commission called on EU governments to stop selling citizenship to investors.
Though this is different to golden visas, which offer permanent residency rather than citizenship, the call came as part of a move to crack down on this combined multi-billion euro industry. In the wake of the Ukraine war, there were concerns that these schemes could be a security risk.
Brussels also called for countries to double-check whether people sanctioned due to the war were holding a golden passport or visa that they had issued.
In the past, the EU has also said that schemes of this kind are a risk to security, transparency and the values that underpin the European Union project.
In October 2022, the European Commission urged Albania to "refrain from developing an investors' citizenship scheme (golden p
If your idea of Spain is eating paella, dancing flamenco, and improving your Spanish, Catalonia might surprise you.
The tonka bean, a wizened-looking South American seed, is beloved for its complex almond-vanilla scent, often appearing as an ingredient in perfumes. Outside the United States, it has also long been utilized by chefs, but studies have indicated that coumarin, a chemical compound in the plant, can cause liver damage in animals, and the Food and Drug Administration banned the bean in commercial foods in 1954. Now, with reports that the minuscule amounts used to impart big flavor are harmless (and the F.D.A. seemingly not particularly interested in enforcing the ban in recent years), tonka is showing up on dessert menus here. Thea Gould, 30, the pastry chef at the daytime luncheonette La Cantine and evening wine bar Sunsets in Bushwick, Brooklyn, was introduced to tonka after the restaurant’s owner received a jar from France, where it’s a widely used ingredient. Gould says the bean is an ideal stand-in for nuts — a common allergen — and infuses it into panna cotta, whipped cream and Pavlova. Ana Castro, 35, the chef and owner of the New Orleans seafood restaurant Acamaya, discovered tonka as a young line cook at Betony, the now-closed Midtown Manhattan restaurant. Entranced by the ingredient’s grassy, stone fruit-like notes, she’s used it to flavor a custardy corn nicuatole, steeped it into roasted candy squash purée and grated it fresh over a lush tres leches cake. And at the Musket Room in New York’s NoLIta, the pastry chef Camari Mick, 30, balances tonka’s richness with acidic citrus like satsuma and bergamot. Over the past year, she’s incorporated it into a silky lemon bavarois and a candy cap mushroom pot de crème and whipped it into ganache for a poached pear belle Hélène. “Some people ask our staff, ‘Isn’t tonka illegal?’” she says. Their answer: Our pastry chef’s got a guy. —
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