If You Do not Like Selling Passports, Give Them for Free to Those Who Deserve Them Vesco Paskalev The Maltese idea to ‘sell’ citizenships was met with almost universal criticism, not only within our Forum discussion but throughout Europe. While it is difficult to disagree with most of the arguments against monetization of citizenship, in my view they all aim at the wrong target. It is not the sale of citizenship per se which violates principles of justice and democracy; it is the existing international system of inclusion and exclusion of third country nationals which is deeply skewed and denigrates the value of citizenship. For all that I know, even the ultra-rich do not easily throw € 650,000 to the wind, so a condition under which anyone would give huge amounts of money for a travel document is deeply troubling. It is not membership but mobility which is at issue. Moreover, as Paulina Ochoa aptly notes, not only the rich but also the poor seek naturalisation for economic rather than civic reasons. Bauböck distinguishes two sides of citizenship – an internal and an external one. Focusing on the former, he persuasively argues that selling citizenship undermines democracy. In a similar vein, Dzankic notes that in some cases the very fact of putting a price to a good corrupts the good. As a decent republican I fully agree with both of them. But as Spiro notes, the corruption of this good may have started long ago for reasons which have nothing to do with the recent fashion of investor citizenship schemes. While the policy makers and academics were predominantly concerned with the internal aspect of citizenship, various forces – from the Schengen Agreement via Ryanair to Moneygram – have brought the external aspect to the fore. Is citizenship all about travel indeed, or about identity and democracy? A natural experiment occurred between Bulgaria and Macedonia. Most Bulgarians believe that Macedonians are actually ethnic Bulgarians, who happen to live in an artificial country because of some historic contingencies. Naturally, most Macedonians are annoyed (to put it mildly) by that suggestion and vehemently assert their Macedonian identity against Bulgarian imperialism. Yet, when Bulgaria joined the EU, Macedonians © The Author(s) 2018 R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating Transformations of National Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92719-0_10 47