Welcome

Jun, 2018

There has been a recent amendment to the Greek Residency-by-Investment Law (the so-called Golden Visa Law), i.e. Law No. 4251/2014. 

On the 12th of June 2018, Law No. 4546/2018 was enacted, which resulted in a wide-scale restructuring of the government fees which must be paid upon submission of each application for a Residence Permit. 

Specifically, according to Article 38, Paragraph 8 of Law No. 4546/2018, the Government Fee which must be paid upon submission of each Residency-by-Investment application has been raised to the amount of 2,000 EUR  per individual applicant with effect from 12 September 2018 (the current amount is 500 EUR). 

Namely, for all applications submitted before that specific date, the government fee will still be at 500 EUR for each applicant, but for all future applications the required fee will be 2,000 EUR.

Please note that minors, i.e. persons under 18 years of age, will remain exempt from the payment of application fees, as in the previous regime.

Jan, 2018

The latest statistics from the Greek Ministry for Migration Policy show that the game has changed for the Greek Golden Visa programme.

In 2017, almost 763 new residence permits have been issued to main investors (not counting their family members):

Chinese nationals are still on the top of the list, posting a slight increase in market share, from 42.5% to 44.7% in 2017.

Russian nationals, who used to hold a market share of 25% for some years now, dropped from second to third place with a market share of merely 7.8%.

Turkish nationals were the big surprise for 2017, as they climbed to 2nd place with a market share of 21.6% (versus 2.7% in previous years).

During the period 2013-2016 only 44 Turkish main investors applied for the Greek Golden Visa. However, in 2017, the Turkish applicants quadrupled, with 165 new residence permits issued for main investors. According to the data, Chinese and Turkish nationals now account for 66.3% i.e. the 2/3 of the market. 

It seems that the Greek programme is now quite mature to become a leader in the Residency-by-Investment market, both in Europe and around the globe.

Alexander Varnavas LLM IMCM

May, 2017

We are pleased to announce our Law Firm's participation to the 2nd Investment Migration Forum in Geneva on 5-7 of June. Alexander Varnavas will participate as a speaker regarding the Greek Golden Visa Law. The Investment Migration Council (IMC) is the worldwide association of renowned academics, government officials, representatives of international organisations, as well as the world’s leading professionals dealing with investor migration and citizenship-by-investment.

(https://investmentmigrationforum.org)

Mar, 2017

The Firm has been awarded as the “Investment Immigration Law Firm of the Year” in Greece, at the UK-based Corporate INTL 2017 Global Legal Awards. Corporate INTL’s annual awards mark excellence for the world's leading advisers in an array of countries and continents (http://www.corp-intl.com).