Applicants Frustrated With Number of Documents Required for a Schengen Visa

Twitter user Ujjavala Bothra, an Indian national, has shared her experience of applying for a Schengen Visa from her home country, expressing her frustration with the number of documents required for application.

“The amount of paperwork for a Schengen visa is insane! Why is it so difficult to understand: 1. We are not interested in marrying your men, thank you. 2. We are actually adding to the GDP of your country!!” she has tweeted on April 25, attaching a picture of a pile of documents which she had collected for application.

She has also criticised VFSGlobal, an outsourcing and technology services specialist for governments and diplomatic missions worldwide, to which the majority of EU countries have outsourced the handling of visa procedures.

According to Bothra, she had to wait 2.5 hours for an appointment, while she also found out during the application procedures that the document checklist on Norway’s website is outdated, which she calls “speechless”.

“My turn, for an 11:30am appt, came at 2pm – what is the point of booking a slot?” she wrote on her Twitter account, adding that she had to pay an extra 150Rs for every page printed at VFS, or around €1.66 per page.

“Soul crushing would be an understatement to describe my visa experience,” she added at the end, calling for more competition to VFS Global in hopes of better services.

Bothra is not the only one to have such an experience, and India is not the only country where visa applicants are unhappy with the services and the amount of documents required every time they need to apply for a Schengen visa.

Another Twitter user named Richard has also shared his experience of helping someone apply for a Schengen visa from Manila on Twitter on May 3. Richard, who is an Australian citizen, claims that applying for a Schengen visa is “the worst kind of experience” while adding that many of the procedures could be automated if government information was available digitally.

“At least with this being my… 5th time doing this I have a collected folder of things I need to provide,” he wrote, further showing his discontent with the very limited number of appointment slots.

The procedures for applying for a Schengen visa include collecting several documents, which should then be submitted at the visa application centre on the appointment day. While the basic documents, like passport and older visa photocopies, health insurance valid for the whole trip, proof on how the traveller plans to cover their expenses during the trip, are the same for every applicant, the other documents depend on the type of visa one is applying for.

For example, those applying for a business Schengen visa will need to submit an invitation letter by the partner company in the EU, as well as a short profile of the applicant’s working place, amongst others.