Greece’s Golden Visa Becoming Europe’s Most Popular – 2,305 Main Applicants in 2017 Alone
If official statistics are to be believed (and, indeed, correctly interpreted), Greece’s Golden Visa program saw 2,305 main applicants and 3,394 dependents qualify for residence in the Hellenic Republic in 2017 alone, reveal fresh data from Enterprise Greece. Portugal’s Golden Visa program, by contrast, registered 1,351 main applicants and 2,678 dependents during the same period.
While Portugal still holds the lead in Europe in terms of the cumulative number of main applicants (5,553 as of Dec 31st, 2017, compared to Greece’s 5,246), unless interest in the Greek program craters dramatically, Portugal will see its pole position usurped by Greece within a matter of months.
The top ten countries of origin for applicants to the Greek Golden Visa in 2017:
China 1,011
Russia 395
Turkey 222
Egypt 101
Lebanon 91
Ukraine 77
Iraq 69
Syria 52
Jordan 50
Iran 29
Christian Henrik Nesheim is the founder and editor of Investment Migration Insider, the #1 magazine – online or offline – for residency and citizenship by investment. He is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, documentary producer, and writer on the subject of investment migration, whose work is cited in the Economist, Bloomberg, Fortune, Forbes, Newsweek, and Business Insider. Norwegian by birth, Christian has spent the last 16 years in the United States, China, Spain, and Portugal.