The following letter was submitted to the Antiguan Herald for publication.

According to Antigua News Room, the European Union's demand that Eastern Caribbean nations phase out their Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programmes by 2028 has drawn sharp criticism from regional observers. The following letter, authored by Mike Browne, argues that the ultimatum constitutes economic coercion rather than a legitimate security measure.

I write not as a supplicant but as an observer of a profound injustice. The European Union's ultimatum to phase out CBI programmes in the Eastern Caribbean by 2028 is not a matter of security. It is an act of economic aggression dressed in bureaucratic language.

This decision fits a disturbing historical pattern. In the 1990s, Caribbean banana farmers were told their preferential access to European markets violated "free trade." The WTO, at US insistence, dismantled these arrangements, devastating Windward Islands economies without offering meaningful compensation or transition pathways.

In the first decade of this century, when Caribbean nations pivoted to offshore financial services as a lawful diversification strategy, they were blacklisted, greylisted, and subjected to derisking that severed correspondent banking relationships essential for trade and remittances. Meanwhile, Delaware, South Dakota, London, and Luxembourg continued hosting opaque financial structures without penalty.

Now the same logic targets CBI. The EU's own Visa Suspension Mechanism report states with absolute clarity: "The operation of such programmes constitutes, in itself, a ground for suspending the visa-free status of third countries." No documented abuse. No specific wrongdoing. The mere existence of the programme is now deemed an "inherent security risk."

The EU demands that Caribbean nations abandon a revenue stream contributing 20 to 35 percent of GDP, yet continues operating its own "golden visa" and residence schemes. The United States maintains the EB-5 investor programme while imposing visa restrictions on Caribbean states.

This is not about security. If it were, the EU would subject its own member states to the same standard. Malta operated a CBI programme for years before a 2025 European Court of Justice ruling found it breached EU law. The double standard could not be clearer: what is deemed "strategic" when Europeans do it becomes "threatening" when Caribbean nations do.

The programme funds healthcare, education, infrastructure, and disaster relief. It provides economic resilience for Small Island Developing States uniquely vulnerable to climate shocks, supply chain disruptions, and global economic downturns. Asking us to abandon this pillar without "viable, concrete and credible replacement revenues" is not partnership. It is deliberate sabotage.

The EU claims to support "sustainable development" through the Samoa Agreement and Global Gateway Investment Agenda. Yet the same partnership framework that professes commitment to Caribbean development now seeks to dismantle its most effective revenue tool.

If the EU genuinely respects Antigua and Barbuda and the countries of the Eastern Caribbean as equal partners, it must first acknowledge the historical pattern across bananas, banking, and now passports, and provide meaningful compensation for the economic disruption already imposed.

It must recognise that full abolition should be conditional on concrete, verifiable replacement revenues being in place before discontinuation, not on an arbitrary timeline that serves European political convenience.

It must agree to cease what can only be described as the neo-ethnicisation of citizenship governance — the implicit assumption that certain nations' citizenship is "transactional" while others' remains "sacred." This is postcolonial logic that limits mobility for populations from the Global South.

The EU must also offer genuine technical assistance and investment under the LACIF and Global Gateway frameworks to build alternative economic pillars before demanding the demolition of existing ones. And as a matter of fairness, it must subject EU member state investor residence schemes to the same scrutiny applied to Caribbean programmes, ending the structural asymmetry that punishes small states while accommodating large financial centres.

This is the third time the EU has told Caribbean nations: "You cannot compete in this space, even if we can." The language changes every time — from "free trade" to "financial crime" to "security" — but the result is always the same: development pathways narrowed, economic sovereignty constrained, and small states disciplined while large powers retain discretion for themselves.

Antigua and Barbuda has reformed its CBI programme, harmonised investment thresholds, and strengthened due diligence. The EU acknowledges these efforts, then moves the goalposts to elimination. This is not cooperation. It is coercion.

The countries of the Eastern Caribbean are right to reject this unilateral demand. The CBI programme will continue — not from defiance, but from necessity — because the EU offers no credible alternative for the prosperity of these islands and their people.

A true partnership recognises the right of sovereign nations to determine their own development paths. The EU's decision reveals that partnership, in this context, means compliance, not collaboration.

Standing on the side of truth and justice.

God nar sleep.

Mike Browne