Vanuatu has been handing out passports to Russian nationals since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, EU records show.
The tiny South Pacific island nation, which gained independence from Anglo-French forces in 1980, handed out more than 200 passports to Russians last year alone as part of an “investor citizenship scheme” which has traditionally allowed holders to enter the EU without a visa.
The EU is in the process of withdrawing visa-free entry to all Vanuatu passport holders after concluding that the Pacific island’s passport application process is subject to “security loopholes”.
Thousands of passports have been issued, many without any checks on the identity of applicants.
The withdrawal decision follows the failure of negotiations between island authorities and the European Commission designed to amend the application process.
In 2023, “most applications were from nationals of China (519) and Russia (237). Contrary to other third countries that operate investor citizenship schemes, Vanuatu has continued to accept and process applications from Russian nationals since the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” reads a document circulating in the EU Council of Ministers in Brussels.
Passport holders were also allowed to change their names prior to 2021, with no questions asked. While this practice has been discontinued, Vanuatu has no record of those who changed names before 2019.
The “investor citizenship scheme” has been operating since 2015 and has issued more than 10,000 passports.
EU authorities started to take fright when no checks were made on applicants to ensure they were not criminals. While island authorities have since started using the Interpol database, the European Commission noted that there has been no requirement for applicants to be resident in Vanuatu. Neither have island authorities exchanged information with other authorities to established whether applicants’ documents were genuine.
The rejection rate among applicants has been “extremely low”, the Commission noted, leading to the conclusion “that the screening process is unreliable”.
In February 2023, following Commission pressure, Vanuatu established a commission of inquiry tasked with investigating alleged wrongdoings committed during the operation of the investor citizenship schemes. But in April this year, Vanuatu “informed the Commission that that investigation was still ongoing” with no end date in sight.
The passport application process has been “managed by specialised agencies located outside Vanuatu, which means that applicants do not need to have any direct contact with the authorities of Vanuatu”.
No interviews with applicants have been held during the application process.
Applications have been processed “within very short deadlines”: a maximum of 14 days, while the rejection rate has been “extremely low”. In 2022 and 2023, Vanuatu received 1,988 applications for citizenship in exchange for an investment, of which only 27 were rejected.
The EU imposed a partial, temporary, suspension on short-stay visa exemptions for Vanuatu passport holders in 2022 and then widened it to all passport holders last year. The bloc is now removing Vanuatu from the EU list of nations that do not require a visa to enter the EU.
