How is confidentiality of VFS Global arranged for a visa application?

Privacy statement short stay visa application
Version 1.2, March 28, 2022

Legal basis and meaning
To ensure that the privacy of citizens remains sufficiently guaranteed, the Wbp (Personal Data Protection Act) was replaced in May 2018 by the General Data Protection Regulation that applies to all countries in the European Union. Personal data is information that can be traced back to a person. The purpose of the law is twofold, namely that personal data of people is handled with care (including the security of that data) and that there is transparency. The latter means that every citizen must be able to view his or her personal data. This means that it must be known who collects this data, for what purpose and what data it concerns.

How does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (BZ) handle personal data?
Precisely because BZ's work involves a lot of personal data of citizens, it is important that the privacy of you, as a citizen, is protected and that work is done in accordance with the GDPR. Below you will find how BZ does this.

Information about your visa application
Why do we request data
In order to assess a visa application, we need your data. You fill in this information on a visa application form. Only those data that are required will be requested from you.

Sharing your data with third parties
This data and the data concerning the decision taken on your application or a decision to cancel, revoke or extend an issued visa are entered in the New Visa Information System (NVIS) and in the European Visa Information System (VIS ).

In order to properly assess the application for your visa, the personal data provided on the visa application form, as well as your fingerprints and the photo taken of you, will be provided to the competent authorities of the Member States for a decision on your visa application. Even if your data is stored in the VIS, it is accessible to the visa authorities and the authorities competent to carry out visa checks at the external borders and within the Member States, immigration and asylum authorities in the Member States.

The reason for this is that the authorities can check whether the conditions for legal entry and stay on the territory of the Member States are fulfilled, identify persons who do not or no longer fulfill these conditions, examine an asylum application and determine who is responsible is with this research. Under certain conditions, the data is also available to the designated authorities of the Member States and to Europol for the purpose of preventing, detecting and investigating terrorist offenses and other serious crime.

When you use our services, such as when applying for a Schengen visa, BZ may share some of your personal data with third parties. This happens in countries where BZ uses External Service Providers to process your application. The ministry is working together with two companies for this; TLScontact (in China only) and VFS Global (in the rest of the world). Both companies also work for other Schengen countries for the processing of Schengen visa applications. When processing Schengen visas (National Visa Information System), BZ also makes use of external parties (Processors) from the IT sector, both for the management of the system used and for hosting the necessary computer space. These external parties are located in Utrecht and Amsterdam respectively. When we share your personal data with processors, we ensure that your personal data is protected in accordance with the GDPR and this Privacy Statement by the processing agreements we have concluded with our third parties.

To process your visa application as quickly and as well as possible, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has introduced a new working method, Information Supported Decision Making. Information Supported Decision Making works on the basis of comparing data from your visa application with the information contained in a specially designed and secured database of the Ministry, the Foreign Affairs Analysis Environment (BAO).

Your rights
You have the right to ask what data about you is stored in the NVIS (New Visa Information System), to correct incorrect data and to have data deleted, if permitted by law, in accordance with the provisions of the GDPR.

You also have the right to ask a Member State which data about you is stored in the VIS (European Visa Information System).

You have the right to correct incorrect data and to have your unlawfully processed data destroyed.

Retention period of your data
Your data will be stored in the NVIS, the BAO and in the VIS for a maximum of 5 years.

You can contact:
For questions and requests about your personal data, please contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of Consular Affairs and Visa Policy (DCV), PO Box 20061, 2500 EB DEN HAAG.

You can also submit a question or request regarding the protection of personal data to the national supervisory authority. This is the Dutch Data Protection Authority, PO Box 93374, 2509 AJ DEN HAAG.