Issuing Schengen visas in Thailand under scrutiny (2014)
Recently, EU Home Affairs, the Home Affairs department of the European Commission, published the latest figures on Schengen visas. In this article I take a closer look at the application for Schengen visas in Thailand and I try to provide insight into the statistics surrounding the issuance of visas to see if there are any striking figures or trends.
An extensive analysis of the figures is available as a PDF attachment: www.thailandblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/Schengenvisums-Thailand-2014.pdf
What is the Schengen Area?
The Schengen area is a cooperation of 26 European member states that have a common visa policy. The Member States are therefore bound by the same visa rules, which are laid down in the common Visa Code, EU Regulation 810/2009/EC. This enables travelers to move within the entire Schengen area without mutual border controls, visa holders only need one visa - the Schengen visa - to cross the external border of the Schengen area. More information about the regulations can be found in the Schengen Visa Dossier: www.thailandblog.nl/dossier/schengenvisum/dossier-schengenvisum/
How many Thai came here in 2014?
Exactly how many Thai people came to the Netherlands, Belgium or one of the other member states cannot be said with certainty, data is only available about the application and issue of Schengen visas. It should also be noted that not only Thais can apply for a Schengen visa in Thailand: a Cambodian who has the right of residence in Thailand can also apply for a visa from Thailand. Thai people from elsewhere in the world will also apply for a visa. The figures I mention are actually purely production figures of the paperwork that the posts (embassies and consulates) move in Thailand. Nevertheless, they give a good impression of the state of affairs.
Are the Netherlands and Belgium a popular destination for Thais?
In 2014, 9.570 visas were issued by the Netherlands for 9.689 applications. Belgium issued 4.839 visas for 5.360 applications. These figures do not differ much from the previous year, in 2013 the Netherlands issued 9800 visas and Belgium 4613 visas.
This means that our countries are by no means the most popular destination. Germany, France and Italy received half of all applications and issued about half of all visas. For example, Germany received 44.557 applications, France 39.543 applications and Italy 25.487 applications. The Netherlands only received 4,4% of all applications, which is eighth in popularity. Belgium 2,4%, good for twelfth place. In total, 2014 thousand visas were applied for and 219 thousand visas issued in 210.
Because there are no figures per purpose of stay, it is unfortunately impossible to say which part of the travelers came for tourism, business or visiting friends/family, for example. It is also not forgotten that the visa is applied for at the country that is the main target, a Thai with a visa issued by Germany can of course also visit the Netherlands or Belgium for a short time, but this cannot be analyzed from the figures.
Are the Netherlands and Belgium strict?
Many of the missions active in Thailand refuse between 1 and 4 percent of applications. The Dutch embassy refused 1% of the applications last year, and it is not doing badly at all: the number of rejections is getting less and less.
The Belgian embassy rejected 8,5% of the applications. Significantly more than most embassies. If there were a trophy for most rejections, Belgium would take silver with its second place. Only Sweden rejected much more: 22,3% (!). Fortunately, Belgium also shows a downward trend when it comes to rejections, in 2013, 11,3% were rejected.
Both countries issue a relatively large number of multiple entry visas (MEV), which allow an applicant to enter the Schengen area several times. As a result, an applicant has to apply for a new visa less often, which is great for both the applicant and the embassy. It is possible that part of the decrease in visa applications for the Netherlands is due to the fact that this post now issues a large amount of MEV. In fact, since the introduction of the back office system, whereby Dutch visas are processed in Kuala Lumpur, 99,9% of all visas are MEVs. The RSO back office implements this liberal visa policy throughout the region (including the Philippines and Indonesia): 99 to 100% of visas are MEVs and the number of rejections in the region was around 1% last year.
The Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that its mail in Bangkok issues a lot of MEV to bona fide travelers. They then have to apply for a visa less often, and this also has an influence on the rejection rate, according to the ministry. She obviously has a point with that, because many other missions are less generous with MEV, which nevertheless only partly explains the relatively high number of rejections. This could possibly be explained by a different profile (eg more family visits and fewer tourists compared to fellow member states) of Thais coming to Belgium or other risk analyzes by the Belgian authorities. For example, the risk of tourists (on an organized tour) is generally estimated to be lower than visiting family: the latter might not return to Thailand. Such a suspicion results in a rejection on the basis of “danger of establishment”.
Are many Thai people still refused at the border?
Not or hardly, according to Eurostat data. This statistical office of the EU collected figures, rounded to 5, about refusals at the border. According to these figures, not a single Thai person was refused entry at the border in the Netherlands in 2014, in the two years before that about 10 Thai people and even further back in time about 15 Thai people were refused entry. In Belgium, according to the rounded figures, no Thai has been refused at the border for years. Thai refusal at the border is therefore a rarity. In addition, I must give the tip that travelers prepare well: bring all the necessary supporting documents so that they can demonstrate that they meet the visa requirements when asked by the border guards. In case of refusal, it is best not to have yourself sent back immediately, but to consult a (on-call) lawyer, for example.
Conclusion
In general, the vast majority of applicants get their visa, which is good to know. There seems to be no talk of rejection factories or discouragement policies. The trends that became visible in the earlier study at the end of 2014, “The issuance of Schengen visas in Thailand under the microscope” seem to be broadly continuing. Apart from the positive fact that the Dutch embassy almost exclusively issues multiple entry visas, there are few remarkable changes. For most embassies, the number of visa applications is stable or increasing and the number of rejections remains stable or continues to decrease. These are not unfavorable figures for the longer term! Perhaps with further positive developments in the future, the visa requirement for Thais can be abolished, as outgoing ambassador Joan Boer once advocated.
Sources:
- ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/visa-policy/index_en.htm#stats
- ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-datasets/-/migr_eirfs
- Contact with the Dutch and Belgian authorities (via the embassies). Thanks!
About this blogger
-
Regular visitor to Thailand since 2008. Works in the accounting department of a Dutch wholesaler.
In his spare time he likes to go cycling, walking or reading a book. Mainly non-fiction, especially the history, politics, economy and society of the Netherlands, Thailand and countries in the region. Likes to listen to heavy metal and other noise
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I had a lot of fun digging through the numbers and figuring things out. However, I personally believe that the current set-up with RSO also has its drawbacks, when visas were still handled by the embassy itself, the response time to questions was less than 24 hours, the RSO takes me 1-2 weeks to answer questions. questions with even less concrete answers. That is a pity, but this system has also been introduced as a cutback, so the visa procedure itself also takes longer. I appreciate the work done by the RSO, but overall I was more content when the embassy was still in control.
Then also this: as I write in my piece, there are no detailed figures per purpose of stay for Thailand. However, the Belgians were able to give me a general answer in an otherwise nicely drafted response:
“Our 2014 figures for short stay visa applications show that more than 40% of these applications were submitted in the context of tourism, slightly more than 20% were submitted on the basis of an invitation by a private person and 12% of the applications concerned family visits. This can be explained by the fact that Belgium, as the heart of Europe, is very attractive to tourists worldwide. The central location, the European institutions that are housed there, the beautiful cultural heritage in many of our cities and last but not least our unparalleled beers and chocolate. We are a warm people and like to share in our wealth. Nevertheless, each visa application must meet all conditions set by the Visa Code.
(...)
I wish to take this opportunity to thank you for your devoted interest.”
For the Netherlands I have not been able to find out a general distribution of the purposes of stay, plus that the distribution at country level (Thailand) could be very different. In order to give the most honest possible picture of the figures, I have therefore not been able to include a distribution of the purposes of stay in my piece.
Interesting and thorough article Rob, as we are used to from you.
I have been married for 10 years and have been living in Thailand for 8 years now, why are they always so difficult when we apply for a visa to go to Belgium. Normally they now give a visa for 2 years, but that is not possible because her passport expires next year. But then I can still ask for a new passport and then the problem is solved, but the person at the counter is Thai and I can take my wife not help incomprehensible. What do you think about that?
Dear de Laender, I cannot say anything about why the Belgians are (more) difficult, I received no response from the embassy itself last year and also now. I also hear left and right that it is difficult to get answers from the embassy, which is a pity, of course, because there is no understanding if the embassy has very valid reasons for the policy/results pursued.
I assume that the reasons why you as a partner do not have access are the same as those of the Dutch embassy and which are stated in the Schengen Dossier: it is first and foremost about the applicant, who must demonstrate that she/he meets the visa requirements. It is also possible to discover a difference in answers (you as a referent who mentions completely different things about, for example, the destination of the foreign national) for the purpose of combating fraud, and it also sometimes happens that a referent went berserk and was very aggressive towards the staff. Valid reasons in my opinion, but that can also have a negative effect, for example if your partner is very tense and prefers to have you silently standing next to her as a sponsor at the counter, or if the foreign national is not really assertive due to miscommunication between the applicant and counter staff or due to mistakes of the desk clerk with a lump to the reed. Ideally, of course, sponsors would also be tacitly present at the counter and, in exceptional cases, interfere in the conversation (for example, if the applicant threatens to be thrown into the woods with a bunch of people), we have to assume from the embassy that this will happen in practice. was too much to ask for too many people and unfortunately such a policy cannot be pursued.
exactly what rob says. My girlfriend isn't exactly assertive with officials. This week she was going to apply for a new visa, quite a step for her just to go to the embassy without me. We do our best to submit a file that is as complete as possible, but the lady at the counter thought otherwise and simply took some – for her seemingly unimportant – documents from the file (including the travel insurance certificate…) and gave them to back to my girlfriend. When my girlfriend insisted, she just pretended not to hear, so my girlfriend drifted off… back home, 470 miles away. She was completely upset, couldn't sleep and called the embassy this morning (in Thailand). There she got one of those typical reception clerks who told her that she was always allowed to submit a complaint via e-mail and that was the end of it. Finally she called me out of bed in a panic – at 04.00am this night – and crying, asked me to help. Fortunately, I always have a scan of all documents and I have sent an email to the Consul and pointed out the problem to him, with the request to add the documents to the file. I find this very unheard of (I didn't put it in my email, though), such an action can lead to a refusal because documents are missing. This would certainly have been the case here because the insurance is an important document. And we ? We just have to go through it and find it all normal.
We've had correspondence about this before.
The French and Germans can complete a visa application much faster than the Dutch, because everything has to go to KL. That is why I have been advising my business relations to inquire about those two for some time now.
In fact, it is also a nonsense story: how many don't cross Paris, get on the TGV and be somewhere else in a few hours. Same with Frankfurt and then to E-France, or via Düsseldorf to NL/B.
Why a Schengen visa is not jointly issued by the EU, and so citizens finally see an advantage of the EU, is a mystery to me. All must deliver on exactly the same conditions, and where you arrive first or stay longest… come on, welcome to 2015.
One central handling of these kind of consular jokes from all EU / Schengen states together, possibly even with a branch in Phuket, Pattaya and Chiang Mai, and you have AND a considerable saving AND an improvement of services AND an advantage for the taxpaying citizen.
Must have everything to do with the ego of various countries (member states)
I myself am also in favor of a Schengen embassy for processing visas, or better yet an EU post to also be able to arrange a visa for the UK. Then all Thai could go to 1 place, the services in Thai (the Netherlands now wants supporting documents in English because the RSO has no people who speak Thai) and everything could also be more structured: comparable lead times, the same weightings when assessing an application etc.
In the Visa Code update proposed on 1 April 2014 - but not yet adopted - a traveler will soon be able to apply for an application for each Member State at any Schengen post. You could then apply for a visa with main purpose Portugal at the German embassy, because the main purpose is no longer relevant. Logical also with the open borders. A fixed list of required supporting documents is also established per country in order to harmonize the assessment/procedure as much as possible. That is already in the direction of what you and I call. But then you still have many application counters in Bangkok, while you might as well open a front office in other major cities. For example, handling could take place at 1 location in Bangkok. If you ask me, and I'm speculating, it's not because countries prefer not to hand things over.
Always nice to see those states to get an idea of the traveling Thai. With the current demise of the Euro, it has of course become more attractive for Thai people with money to travel to most Schengen countries. The Eiffel Tower and the fallen Berlin Wall have now become major attractions.
In recent years there has been good control and supervision of, among other things, the young Thai ladies who traveled to the Netherlands. Those who came for the wrong reasons had become well known and were no longer granted a visa in Bangkok. So you no longer see them traveling directly to the Netherlands. At present, this control still applies due to the weapon at the airports, but domestic control has ceased to exist due to the abolition of the duty to report, prompted by advancing insights and Eu matching or regulations, and by too few police personnel.
Traveling through Europe without borders has become easy and that is why, in my view, there is an explicable part of visas issued by other EU countries. In Germany, France and Italy they do not know the ladies who have caused problems in the Netherlands in the past and will therefore proceed to visa issuance more quickly. The ladies then travel via Paris or Frankfurt or Berlin and come to the Netherlands with the first train to continue their old work for three months or longer because of possible successes in earnings. Currently, prostitution with regard to Thai people in the Netherlands has declined sharply and you see much more human trafficking and exploitation cases with Chinese women in the increased number of massage parlors annex brothels.
By the way, have you seen that new movie Skintrade? I recommend it.
Incidentally, Belgium is a country that is less strict with regard to immigration policy. Particularly in the inclusion of Surinamese people who are no longer welcome in the Netherlands, but apparently are welcome in Belgium. The exchange of information between EU countries is still bad.
For example, it happens that aliens declared undesirable in the Netherlands are admitted to another EU country, with all the consequences that entails (including no longer deportable from the EU). So you can travel freely to the Netherlands again without control, where the chance of being caught is very small if you keep a low profile.
Incidentally, in my opinion (experience) not many Thai people will go to Belgium because of the chocolate. I sometimes hand out chocolate to Thai people and the reactions are nothing to write home about.
Incidentally, I share the writer's opinion that it is good that visa issues are less difficult to deal with, because the majority of (Asian) travelers are of course bona fides, but care must still be taken that criminals do not respond to this again play with all the consequences for the 20 to 30 million people who are transported around the world against their will and are abused like a piece of meat. A large part of this from Asia. So know what you are doing and think before you start.
Needless to say, I am not in favor of completely abolishing the Schengen visa.
Dear Jacques, you do not mention any source, so your story cannot be tested and is also rattling on all sides. There has been a VIS system for a number of years and it contains all visa applicants, so you cannot just apply for a visa in another country after a previous refusal: http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/nieuws/2011/10/11/europees-visa-informatiesysteem-van-start.html
As long as you don't come up with a source where your story can be tested, I'll refer it to the 'Realm of Fables'.
As Khun Peter points out, the Schengen member states share the information in the common VIS database. The UK also has insight into this system. The refusals, travel history, notes, etc. are therefore visible to all Member States. If your application is refused by the Netherlands, the Germans will also see this, if you are deported from the country (because of illegal work, you are not allowed to work on a visa), the Germans will also see this. Then see how to get a visa.
I have no figures about massage parlors (a subject in itself), but my feeling tells me that almost all of them are ladies who live here on a residence permit or have naturalized Dutch. Occasionally there is someone who works illegally on a VCR. And in the shady circuit possibly some illegal immigrants who may or may not be victims of human trafficking. The government has raided massage parlors of Thai, Chinese, etc. on several occasions. Sometimes there was an undeclared worker or an illegal worker, but I don't think this happens on a large scale among visa holders. In interviews earlier here on TB, the embassy also does not have the idea that this is happening (logically, otherwise they never refuse so few visas). A proper investigation would of course be nice, although illegal circuits are by definition difficult to investigate. But like I said, this is a topic in itself. Also see: https://www.thailandblog.nl/visum-kort-verblijf/antwoorden-jeannette-verkerk-visumvragen/
Belgium issues 4.839 visas for 4.839 applications, so zero rejections. Further on there is talk of 8.5 % rejections and second place for the trophy. Just put drops in my eyes (cataract surgery) but after reading 3 times I am sure that this is what it says. Please clarification.
That should of course be “Belgium issues 4.829 visas for 5.360 applications”. Can I borrow your eye drops?
Incidentally, the reason why Georgia ranks so high has to do with the fact that the Dutch embassy also handles the CRR issue for Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg.
That flier does apply to more countries, for example, there are a lot fewer embassies active in the Philippines than in Thailand: the Netherlands, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Austria. People will then either go to one of those embassies or report to an embassy in a neighboring country.
In the absence of a particular representation, another embassy usually handles visa applications. For example, the Netherlands also handles visas for Latvia and Poland in the Philippines. The Norwegian embassy in Manila handles matters for Sweden, Finland and Denmark, etc. If Poland, for example, were a very popular destination among travelers from the Philippines, this would still be the responsibility of the Netherlands. The Netherlands is the most popular embassy (24.439 applications out of a total of 125.037), but the chance that there are many travelers for Poland or Finland is small. Popular countries such as Germany (13.993 applications) and France (17.260 applications) have their own embassy, so apparently the Netherlands is just incredibly popular in the Philippines.
For example, it is still possible to delve further into the figures, and to make various comparisons. For example, how many applications Thailand received in 2014: 219.015 compared to 16.725.908 applications worldwide, a share of 1,3%. Or how many visas have been issued in Thailand: 209.737 of a total of 15.684.796 worldwide or 1,3%. In that respect, the number of visas from Thailand is hardly significant.
So there is plenty to play with the figures, and it is quite easy to do with the Excel sheets from EU Home Affairs: for example, switch some filters on/off in the top row, sort the data by a specific column, and so on. Perhaps a Flemish reader feels compelled to take a closer look at the Belgian figures?
Such analyzes immediately raise questions: how many Thai people actually come to the Netherlands, how long do they stay in the Netherlands, how long do they stay in other Member States? How is this divided according to type of stay (tourism, family visit, visit with friends, business, etc.)? Unfortunately not something I can answer.
Source for where a member state represents another country: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/documents/policies/borders-and-visas/visa-policy/docs/en_annex_28_ms_consular_representation_20.pdf
@ Rob V. You have to have the cataract surgery first, then you get the drops on prescription!