Brussels and Washington both raised security concerns about Caribbean citizenship by investment (CBI) programs, and Saint Lucia answered them. What changed since, Deputy Prime Minister Ernest Hilaire argued at a press conference in Castries on July 13, is the European Union’s objective rather than the programs themselves.
Hilaire, who holds the CBI portfolio, said both capitals had worried that individuals “who may not have the best interests of those countries at heart” would use the programs to gain entry. Castries answered along two lines. “We appreciate their concern, and we share it, and that we will work with them to make sure the programs do not constitute a security threat to them,” he said.
That framing arrives three weeks after the European Commission wrote to all five Eastern Caribbean CBI states asking them to phase out their programs by June 1, 2028. Antigua & Barbuda published its letter on July 7. Saint Lucia has not published its own.
“A Change in the Mood of the Commission”
Castries had already implemented what Brussels asked for, on Hilaire’s account. He cited strengthened legislation and the introduction of “value metrics,” saying the government had “instituted a number of changes to strengthen the programs.”
One requirement he singled out was institutional. The Commission “wanted a regional body that could regulate the programs, oversee the programs, and make sure that all the legislative requirements had been met,” he said. Five governments signed the agreement establishing that body in September 2025.
Then the target moved. “We’re also aware that within the European Union there is a change in the mood of the Commission,” Hilaire said, pointing to member states told to convert direct citizenship routes into residence-first ones.
His evidence was Malta. The Commission took the member state to court “because Malta had said: no, it’s our right to have a program if we want to,” he said.
In April 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union sided with the Commission. “So they have taken a decision that their members must not have these programs.”
Hilaire reached further back for the analogy that landed hardest. Saint Lucia produced under half a percent of world banana output and still lost the trade preferences that sustained the sector. Drive around the island, he told reporters, and the scars remain visible.
Dominica’s Number
Roseau supplied the fiscal dimension, though not from the government. The Dominica Freedom Party (DFP), one of the country’s opposition parties, issued a statement on July 13. It attacked the government’s handling of the program and its silence on whether Dominica had received a letter of its own.
Buried in that statement was the sharpest figure yet published on what a phase-out would cost any single state. Dominica’s 2025/2026 budget projected that 56.7% of recurrent revenue would come from CBI, according to the party. Non-CBI recurrent revenue was budgeted at EC$456.2 million (approximately US$169 million) against recurrent expenditure of EC$679.9 million (approximately US$252 million).
Strip out CBI and the gap runs to roughly EC$224 million a year. The DFP listed the exposed line items: public officers’ salaries, the National Employment Programme, healthcare, road maintenance, and financing for the international airport.
Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has since defended the program publicly and said the five leaders look forward to meeting the Commission in Brussels. That mission was agreed at the Roseau summit on July 10, where the heads of government submitted a joint response that never mentioned the 2028 date.
“Difficult to Believe There Was Ever a Path”
Practitioners reading the same sequence reach a similar conclusion by a different route. Daisy Joseph-Andall, Partner at Joseph Rowe Law, recalled that in 2025 the question everyone asked was what more the Caribbean needed to do to satisfy its international partners. From the second half of 2026, she said, “that question just feels naïve.”
Her inventory of what was delivered covers due diligence, transparency, biometric data collection, regional cooperation, and a regulator that would be the first of its kind across multiple sovereign states. “The Caribbean has done the work,” she said. Meeting reforms of that magnitude with renewed calls to dismantle the programs makes it “difficult to believe there was ever a path to compliance.”
Joseph-Andall, who works from Grenada and Saint Kitts & Nevis, was careful not to reduce the programs to travel documents. CBI delivers value well beyond visa-free access, she noted, yet withdrawal of that access “inevitably casts a negative shadow over programs that have delivered genuine and lasting benefits for our people.”
Nick Stevens, CEO of NTL Trust, frames the choice in cash terms. After years of jumping through hoops to please Brussels, he said, Caribbean leaders are “finally coming to the realization that they have to make a choice between keeping visa-free travel to the EU and keeping CBI programs.” That calculation “logically comes down to money, and the answers may not be the same for all the Caribbean nations involved.”
He points to Vanuatu, whose CBI revenue reached a record in the first half of 2026 despite Brussels having stripped its Schengen access in December 2024. Against that sit EU subsidies, trade, tourism, and reparations for slavery. Stevens expects the region to angle “for subsidies from the EU to replace lost CBI revenue,” met by “a carrot-and-stick approach.”
Patrick Peters, CEO of ClientReferrals, reads the deadline as a message to applicants rather than governments. “The best time to secure a second residence or citizenship is before you need it,” he said, describing today’s buyers as “preserving options that may not be available under the same terms tomorrow.”
Recent history supports the urgency. “We’ve seen governments increase investment thresholds, strengthen due diligence, and modify program benefits with little notice,” Peters said, arguing that those who move early tend to get more certainty and better terms.
What Happens Next
September carries the nearer test. Brussels asked for full exclusion of individuals under EU restrictive measures, plus reinforced vetting for all nationalities, by that point. The regional regulator is expected to become operational in the same month.
Whatever the five governments do will feed into the Commission’s next visa suspension mechanism report in December. Hilaire, for his part, declined to predict the outcome, saying the heads of government would decide how to move forward.
