Country-wide policy
A Regional Regulator for Citizenship by Investment, Passed but Not Commenced
On 10 November 2025 Saint Lucia enacted the Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority Agreement Act, giving the force of law to an Agreement made on 22 September 2025 that establishes a single regulator for the five Eastern Caribbean programmes. The Act does not commence on enactment: it comes into force on a day the Minister appoints by Order in the Gazette, and we found no such Order. Grenada's position is the same. So the regional authority exists on paper in at least two states and is in force in neither of them that we can show.
Topics it changes
What it requires
- Nothing yet applies to an applicant: the Act awaits a commencement Order
At a glance
- Act
- No. 21 of 2025
Assented 3 November 2025, printed with the date 10 November 2025 on its face.
- Commencement
- On a day the Minister appoints
Section 1(2). We found no commencement Order in the Statutory Instrument listings for 2025 or 2026.
- Agreement date
- 22 September 2025
Defined in section 2 and set out in Schedule 1 to the Act.
What the Act would do if it started
The Agreement is annexed to the Act and the Act gives it the force of law, with a provision resolving inconsistency with other law in the Agreement's favour. Around that the Act builds an enforcement apparatus - offences for false statements, for failure to cooperate, for conflict of interest and for non-compliance with directives of the Authority, a civil penalty regime with a notice of opportunity to discharge liability, an appeal, and a limitation period. There is a transitional Part recognising existing approvals, giving provisional prequalification to agents and developers already licensed, and setting a date on which that prequalification expires and they must reapply to the regional body. None of it has effect until the commencement Order is made.
What the law says
«AN ACT to give effect and to provide for the implementation of the Agreement establishing the Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority and for related matters.»About this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«(2) This Act shall come into force on a date to be appointed by the Minister by Order published in the Gazette.»This is the whole of the point. An Act whose commencement is left to a Minister is not in force until the Minister acts, and the Grenadian right of establishment is the standing warning about what happens when nobody does.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The Act is a large document - over two hundred thousand characters as we hold it - and most of that is the Agreement in Schedule 1. We read the Act's own Parts and the arrangement of the Agreement; we have not read every Article of the Agreement and do not state anything from it.
Saint Lucia's own Citizenship by Investment Act was amended a week earlier by Act 22 of 2025, which added a residency and genuine link requirement effective 1 January 2026 and an annual cap on approvals. Those are in force; this Act is not.