The Consulate of Finland is the one that issued
the largest number of Schengen visas, type C (short term visa for tourism,
visiting relatives and friends, business trips) in 2011. Among other leaders are
Spain, Italy, Greece
and Germany.
Travel.ru cites such data with the reference
to the annual report of the Directorate-General of the European Commission. The
list of leaders doesn’t change from year to year, but in 2009 their placement
was different. Then Italy
was on the second place with more than 331 thousand visas, issued on the territory of Russia;
followed by Germany (almost
327 thousand), Spain (about
288 thousand) and Greece
(almost 251.3 thousand). But then Spain
and Greece
have made their visa policy more loyal, forcing back previous record-holders.
In 2010 Spain issued 461.4
thousand visas, and in 2011 – already 699.8 thousand, Greece – 374.6
thousand and 513.2 thousand respectively.
Finland
wins the first place immutably: 729.6 thousand visas in 2009, 952 thousand in 2010
and 1 million 118 thousand in 2011.
In every city which deals with visa applications to this
country (Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Murmansk and Petrozavodsk)
the number of refusals is less than 1%.
Bulgaria grants 100% of application when applying for visa in Novosibirsk; it’s followed by the Consulate of Poland in St. Petersburg – 14.4
requests and 99.9% positive responses. Then it’s Romania
in Moscow (9 thousand requests, 99.8% positive
responses), and Italy in St. Petersburg (22.4 thousand and 99.7%, respectively), and
Lithuania in the same St. Petersburg (11.7
thousand and 99.7%, respectively).
It’s worth noting that Spain, which is
one of the most popular Schengen countries among our tourists, aimed at
receiving not less than one million Russians each year. And if in 2010 this
country was among leaders in visa refusals (10.8% and 5.44% in Moscow
and St. Petersburg,
respectively), then by 2011 these numbers decreased appreciably – to 3.8% and
0.9%.
And Belgium,
with its only Consulate in Moscow,
is the undisputed champion in refusals in 2011. Within the year, the country
issued 20.1 thousand of visas, which looks very strange when compared with the
neighboring Netherlands
(53.8 thousand visas with 0.7-1.2% refusals in St.
Petersburg and Moscow,
respectively). Moreover, since 2010 Belgium worsens its rates. 21.7
thousand visas was issued then, and the percentage of refusals amounted to
10.11%. Apparently, this country doesn’t need tourists from Russia at all.
In fact, for the second year Belgium keeps
its sad record. Other European countries turn down in 4% of cases as a maximum.
When explaining refusals, representative offices of all diplomatic missions
refer to unreliability of the provided information or lack of documents.
However, Germany,
which is one of the most strict country from the point of view of documental
requirements, refuses only in 0.6-2.6% of cases (depending on the city); all in
all in 2011 it issued 383.6 thousand visas.
