On January 11, the Portuguese parliament voted in favour of the introduction of the Green Visa, an extension of the existing Golden Visa scheme.

The introduction of the Golden Visa programme in 2012 with the aim to attract investment from wealthy foreigners willing to invest at least 500,000€ in property or create 10 jobs in Portugal, is considered a huge success by some due to the huge amount of generated investment (around 4.2 billion euros, of which 3.8 million were invested in property) and an untransparent scheme, associated to corruption and money laundering, by others, including Transparency International. Continue reading →