“People get to the Joint Visa Application Center in the morning and leave only in the afternoon. Large queues are formed, people are getting nervous, but it seems that the Center is opened to facilitate the service of citizens in peak season”, said one of the tour company managers in the interview with Aravot.am, presenting his dissatisfaction. His customers are applying to this Joint Visa Application Center opened recently in Armenia to travel to Greece, Spain and Lithuania to rest. The Center that cooperates with a number of embassies of European countries accepts citizens and takes fingerprints and documents, and if necessary, also provides services for completing the documents.
The tour company managers believe that the availability of this service causes great queues. According to them, completing a document takes time. In addition, according to the new rule, the traveler must be present in person because his fingerprints are taken. Another tour company manager thinks that the Center is opened, but the staff does not have enough experience as they do not require all the necessary documents from the tourists, but later it appeared that this document was also necessary. “It has happened that this or that paper was not requested from our “experienced” tourists, but after his hinting they have said that it is really required. In other words, if a person is not an expert on this issue and is guided by what they say, it is possible that the embassy would refuse given citizen with a reason that the list of the documents are incomplete,” notes our interlocutor.
In addition, the tour company managers were pointed out to the problem of the small number of staff in the Center. “Let them at least increase the number of employees for quick servicing people. Who does not know that the tour companies also offer services to complete the documents, they go to the Center for completing their papers, but this process takes longer in the Center, because it takes time, and cause long queues.” In our country, the embassies that have joined this Visa Center do not accept citizens any longer, but in other countries where there are similar visa centers, the citizens have the opportunity to apply to both the embassy and the visa center, in other words it is up to the citizen. The tour operators think that some privileges should be provided at least for the tour companies as it is in other countries.
Note that the embassies of France, Germany and Italy to Armenia have not yet joined this Center. As for the Schengen visa facilitation procedures, the tour operators state that there has been no facilitation made, on the contrary, the European embassies have started to demand such documents that were not listed before, for instance, the bank account flow for the last six months. The tour companies have noticed this toughening on their skin after joining the Eurasian Economic Union.
Lusine BUDAGHYAN
