By Fletcher St. Jean, MBA · St. Jean & Company

The European Union has told five Caribbean governments to shut down their Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programmes by 2028. The prime ministers of those nations have agreed to travel to Brussels. According to Antigua News Room, that decision — reached last Friday in Roseau, Dominica — was the right one. What those leaders bring into the room will determine whether the Caribbean loses a critical revenue stream or emerges with a durable trade compact.

The prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines were present at the Roseau meeting. They will seek audiences with the President of the European Commission, the President of the European Council, and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Foreign ministers, ministers responsible for CBI, ambassadors, and senior officials have been directed to coordinate a unified regional position.

This is the beginning of the hard work — not the end of it. What unfolds in Brussels depends entirely on what the region brings to the table.

What the region is walking into

Commissioner Magnus Brunner's letter of June 25 states plainly that operating a CBI programme is now, in itself, grounds for reviewing Schengen visa-free access — "regardless of how well it is managed." Those four words are the most consequential in the letter. The concern is no longer administrative. It is principled.

ECCIRA — the Eastern Caribbean's new unified CBI regulator, headquartered in Grenada and operational this year — was built to answer the compliance question as well as it can be answered. The EU's reply is that compliance is not the question being asked.

The region should not walk into Brussels arguing that it has cleaned up its programmes. That debate runs into a wall that will not move. It should instead arrive lobbying for something Brussels has not yet been compelled to address: what a genuine partnership requires in exchange.

The strongest hand the region holds

The region's strongest position is not a defence of CBI. It is an exposure of the asymmetry. If these programmes are wound down as Brussels wishes, the EU and the United States secure the integrity objective they have sought. The Eastern Caribbean absorbs the entire fiscal cost.

Dominica stands to lose revenue equivalent to roughly 37 percent of its GDP. St Kitts and Nevis, whose 2024 fiscal deficit already widened to approximately 11 percent of GDP as CBI revenue declined, faces a structural hole with no replacement in sight. Five small governments would lose the financing that has built their hospitals, airports, climate-resilient housing, and fiscal buffers. The EU gains; the Caribbean pays. Saying so plainly — and without anger — should be the first order of business when the delegations sit down.

The second move is to make the ask. Not for compensation, which is a supplicant's position, but for trade. The instruments already exist: the CARIFORUM–EU Economic Partnership Agreement, the Samoa Agreement, and the Global Gateway framework. What the region needs is for those instruments to be made concrete, binding, and matched to goods it can actually deliver. Guaranteed, long-dated market access for Caribbean agricultural produce and value-added goods — paired with EU support for the infrastructure investment required to deliver them — is a settlement both sides can defend. The EU deepens its development partnership; the Caribbean trades a revenue stream for a permanent economic compact. That is a negotiation, not a capitulation.

What to put on the table

The region should arrive with a specific proposal. Several elements belong in it.

A phased transition framework, not a cliff. A hard stop in June 2028 with nothing behind it is not a transition — it is a fiscal crisis. The region should propose a structured, negotiated wind-down, moving toward residency and investment models that satisfy the EU's safeguards while preserving an orderly inflow of investment capital through the adjustment period. A timeline of three to five years, with defined milestones, is a reasonable ask.

Binding agricultural trade access. European preferences once sustained the Windward Islands banana industry. When those preferences were withdrawn, the region learned how quickly an economy built on a single external decision can hollow out. The region should not repeat that lesson — it should use it. A specific, binding commitment to expanded Caribbean agricultural and agro-processing access to EU markets, with defined volumes and timeframes, forms the core of the trade compact the region needs.

A Caribbean Development Partnership facility. The EU's Global Gateway already speaks the language of development partnership. The region should request a dedicated Caribbean facility under that framework, seeded by the EU and matched by Caribbean Development Bank and Eastern Caribbean Central Bank resources, targeted at the infrastructure — cold chain, packing capacity, port upgrades, phytosanitary certification — that makes expanded trade possible.

Climate resilience co-financing. Small island developing states bear a disproportionate cost of climate change they did not cause. The Roseau communiqué named climate resilience as a discussion topic. It belongs in any compact as a specific, quantified commitment — not a general aspiration.

How to go in

Three points of posture matter as much as substance. First, go as one. The unified position called for in Roseau is not optional — it is the entire premise of the negotiation. Five separate conversations give Brussels five opportunities to divide the region. One voice, one proposal, one mandate is the only configuration that carries weight. OECS Chairman Prime Minister Gaston Browne and incoming CARICOM Chairman Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre should lead jointly, signalling that this is a Caribbean-wide position, not a sub-regional grievance.

Second, bring the numbers. Every element of the proposal should carry a figure: the fiscal impact of a hard stop, the revenue replacement required, the investment the region commits to make, the market access volumes being requested. Specificity signals seriousness. Vagueness gives the other side room to agree in principle and deliver nothing in practice. The region has lived that experience before.

Third, engage the history — calmly, not as grievance. The banana industry. The financial services pressure of the late 1990s. The correspondent banking crisis. These are patterns, not accidents. Naming them provides context for why the region is asking for a framework with teeth rather than a framework of intent. A party that has watched solidarity give way to European interest when the two conflicted is right to ask for something binding this time.

The window is now

The Caribbean Development Bank's decade-of-decision analysis estimates a regional financing need of some US$65 billion to 2033 simply to prevent stagnation. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank's Big Push calls for doubling the Eastern Caribbean economy within a decade. Both frameworks assume the region can mobilise capital and sustain public investment. A disorderly fiscal cliff makes both harder. A negotiated compact — trade access, phased transition, development co-financing, logistics investment — makes both possible.

What this moment demands above all others is a plan. Not a communiqué. Not a statement of intent. A specific, costed, legally grounded proposal that compels the EU to accept or refuse it — publicly, before the international community. The meeting has been called. The preparation is everything.