European Parliament overwhelmingly votes for ban on golden passport schemes

The European Parliament has overwhelmingly voted to call for a ban on citizenship-by-investment schemes in the European Union, calling on the Commission to adopt new legislation. 
The results, which were announced on Wednesday evening during a parliamentary session in Strasbourg, saw 595 of 681 MEPs vote in favour of the resolution. 
Only 12 members of the house voted against the motion, while 74 abstained. 
All four Maltese Labour Party MEPs, Alex Agius Saliba, Josiane Cutajar, Cyrus Engerer and Alfred Sant, voted against, making them the only members of the S&D parliamentary group to do so. 
The eight other MEPs who voted against the resolution were Hynek Blaško and Marcel de Graaff from the Identity and Democracy Group; unattached MEPs  Francesca Donato, Mislav Kolakušić, Ioannis Lagos and Miroslav Radačovský; as well as Pereira Sandra and Pimenta Lopes from the Left. 
The resolution, which came after a report by Dutch Renew Europe MEP Sophie Int’ Veld, calls on the European Commission to propose comprehensive legislation to regulate various aspects of residence-by-investment schemes before the end of its current mandate. 

The aim would be to harmonise procedures and...