[ad_1]
Moroccan passport holders have paid at least €3 million in 2021 applying for Schengen visas at one of the embassies and consulates of the Schengen Area countries in Morocco, which applications have been denied, and as a result the money paid for them has been lost too.
In 2021, Moroccan nationals submitted a total of 157,100 applications for Schengen visas, thus becoming the fifth world country with the highest number of visas lodged, just behind the Russian Federation (536,241), Turkey (271,977), Ukraine (194,246), and Saudi Arabia (173,485), SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
Amongst these five countries, Morocco has the highest rejection rate, with 27.6 per cent of visa applications filed in its territory, rejected by the Schengen representatives, while the rejection rate in the first four was 3.2 per cent, 16.9 per cent, 2.7 per cent and 4.3 per cent, respectively.
According to Besart Bajrami, founder of SchengenVisaInfo.com, given that the price for a single Schengen visa application is €80 and they are non-refundable, this means that Moroccans have spent at least €3 million for visas they never received, though the total might be twice higher.
“€3 million is actually not even close to the real amount of money spent by Moroccans for applying for Schengen visas, because at the end of the day, people who applied for a Schengen Visa often had to pay an amount around €35 for a third party processing the application,” Bajrami points out.
Further, he also notes that collecting the documents for a Schengen visa is also costly for applicants, on top of the visa fees.
“Applicants also had to pay for travel insurance, often book hotels and flights with non-refundable fees, as well as pay small fees here and there for the other documents that they had to submit,” he says making it clear that it is difficult to calculate the total amount of money spent in this regard in 2021, but the visa fee amount is at least €3 million.
Schengen Visa Statistics show that, once again, the country with the highest number of rejected visas for Moroccans was France, which out of the 58,310 applications received in Morocco, rejected as many as 20,369 of them, or 35 per cent of them.
The number of visas rejected by the Spanish Embassy in Morocco was also high, though the share was quite lower than that in France. Out of the 84,499 Schengen visa applications filed at this embassy, 15,137 were rejected, or 18 per cent of them.
In fact, France and Spain, together with Germany, are the three Schengen countries responsible for the majority of Schengen Visas rejected in 2021, as out of the 379,207 Schengen Visa applications rejected in 2021, as many as 252,522 applications have been rejected by France, Germany and Spain.
>> 83% Drop in Number of Schengen Visa Applications Filed Worldwide in 2021, Compared to Pre-COVID
[ad_2]
Source link