When Prime Minister Gaston Browne wrote to EU Commissioner Magnus Brunner on October 30, offering to end Antigua and Barbuda’s Citizenship by Investment Program on a negotiated basis, some in our industry treated it as a surrender. It was nothing of the kind. It was the only logical move left on the board, and he made it at the right moment.
The facts are simple. In June, the European Commission asked all five Eastern Caribbean CBI states to wind down their programs by June 1, 2028. That request rests on the revised Visa Suspension Mechanism, in force since December 30, 2025, which made the operation of an investor citizenship scheme a ground for suspending visa-free access in its own right.
That change matters more than anything else in this debate. For a decade, Caribbean governments answered European criticism by improving due diligence, raising prices, adding interviews and sharing data. Those reforms were real. Under the new rules, they no longer decide the outcome. The question Brussels is asking is not whether the programs are well run. It is whether they exist.
Once you accept that, the choice in front of these governments is not between keeping CBI and losing it. It is between a managed exit that is paid for and an unmanaged collapse that is not. A Caribbean passport that loses Schengen access loses most of its value to investors. Fighting to keep the program at the cost of visa-free travel means losing both.
Negotiate while there is something to trade
What makes Browne’s letter smart is not that it concedes the end of the program. It is that it puts a price on it.
Antigua is asking for a transition to the end of 2030, technical assistance, and budget and development support. It proposes a full assessment of the fiscal, financial, economic, social, and legal consequences of closure, to be shared with the Commission by the end of the first quarter of 2027. Any EU support would then be sized against the revenue, investment, and jobs actually lost.
That is how a small state should negotiate with a large one: with numbers, not slogans. CBI has financed infrastructure, debt reduction, and hurricane reconstruction across the region. Banks have lent against expected program receipts. Development projects are mid-construction.
An abrupt stop leaves holes that someone will have to fill. Browne is simply asking Europe to acknowledge that it is creating those holes and to help fill them.
Timing is everything. Governments were asked to respond by November 12, and the Commission’s next Visa Suspension Mechanism report is due in December. Today, the Caribbean still holds the one thing Brussels wants: a voluntary, orderly end to the programs. Once a suspension procedure starts, that leverage is gone. A government that waits to be forced will get the closure without the compensation.
Europe also has reasons to say yes. It does not want to destabilize small partner states, strand lenders or push the region toward other patrons. A negotiated exit lets Brussels claim a policy win without the diplomatic cost of punishing countries that have cooperated for years.
Why the others should follow, and do it together
Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lucia received the same request as Antigua. They face the same law, the same deadline, and the same arithmetic. They should take the same approach.
The worst outcome for the region is to be picked off one at a time. Alone, each of these countries is a very small economy across the table from a bloc of 27. Together, they represent a common position on a single EU policy, backed by a shared currency union and the OECS institutions that already coordinate their diplomacy.
The five leaders have already agreed to present a united front. That front now needs a common ask, and Antigua has just written the first draft of it.
There is a practical reason too. If Antigua negotiates an exit and its neighbors hold out, applications will briefly flow to the holdouts. That will look like a windfall. It will not last. It will put those programs at the top of the Commission’s list, and it will revive the price-cutting that did the region’s reputation so much damage in the first place.
A joint negotiation should rest on a few shared principles: a realistic transition date; compensation sized to independent impact assessments; continued visa-free access for every citizen; and an explicit guarantee that existing CBI citizens and their families keep their status and their travel rights. That last point matters most. The Commission itself counts roughly 107,000 passports issued through these programs. Those people made lawful investments in good faith, and any deal must protect them.
“Isn’t this bad for your business?”
When my comments were published last week, a reader asked a fair question: what happens to firms like mine, which earn a living from these programs? Why would I tell governments to close them?
The answer is that an adviser’s job is to tell clients what is in their interest, not his own. My firm will lose business if these programs close, but I have spent decades in this industry, and I have learned that its value rests on one thing: credibility.
Governments must be able to trust that we will give them honest advice, and investors must be able to trust that the citizenship they receive will hold its value. Advising a small state to defy the EU, and risk the visa-free access of its own people, would fail both tests.
Investment migration is also far bigger than five Caribbean programs. Residence by investment, new jurisdictions in other regions, and governments designing their own tools for non-tax foreign direct investment are where much of the industry’s future lies. The skills that built the Caribbean programs, from due diligence to program design to investor relations, will still be needed.
The firms that do well in the next decade will be the ones that helped their partner governments through this moment, not the ones that told them what they wanted to hear.
A good ending to a good story
Caribbean citizenship by investment has been one of the most successful development tools available to small island states. It turned passports into roads, hospitals, reduced debt, and rebuilt communities after hurricanes. It deserves an ending that protects what it built.
Gaston Browne has shown how to get there: accept the reality, put a price on it, and negotiate while the leverage lasts. I hope his neighbors will join him, and that Brussels will meet them halfway.
