He'd spent a dozen years working for this outcome, but Manuel Delia couldn't quite believe the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on April 29.

"I screamed a little," he told DW. "I was expecting bad news."

Delia, an anti-corruption blogger and executive officer of the Maltese civil society organization Repubblika, had long campaigned against the Maltese government's program offering citizenship to foreign investors.

Malta was the last EU country to offer these so-called "golden passports", with other cash-for-citizenship schemes in Bulgaria and Cyprus ending in recent years.

The decision, he says, vindicates the work of his colleague and friend Daphne Caruana Galizia, the murdered Maltese anti-corruption journalist who was among the first to highlight the dangers of the program.

In 2022, the European Commission brought action against Malta due to its practice of granting citizenship based largely on real estate investments, arguing EU citizenship recipients must show a "genuine link" with the country granting the passport, not just a financial commitment.

But Delia's expected a different result because an

© Deutsche Welle