Applications submitted for the Schengen visa in Yerevan (for Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Austria, and Sweden) from April 2018 will be accepted not by the German Embassy, but by a separate service company, “VisaMetric”. According to the German Embassy, “This step is aimed at reducing the time for waiting for the applications to be considered. Currently, there is no possibility to register for an arrangement for the Schengen visa on the online registration system of the Embassy starting from April 2018”.
“VisaMetric” charges 20 euros service fee for each entry. From now on, the Embassy will continue to accept visa applications in a very limited number. There were no changes to the national visa applications and other consular issues.
The embassy draws attention to the fact that the processes of accepting the applications and making decisions are independent of each other. Decisions on visa applications are made by the representatives of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent to the Embassy of Germany.
In response to a question, Germany’s Ambassador to Armenia, Mathias Kisler, said at a press conference: “VisaMetric” is a Russian-Turkish consortium whose holding company is located in Turkey. This company has many years of experience as a separate service provider. It took part in the announced competition and won a number of awards, including the competition of providing services in Central Asia and the region”.
The Ambassador emphasized that the location of the company did not have a role in the summarizing of the results of the competition. “The announced competition referred not only to Armenia but to the entire region”.
In response to the remark whether they did not take into account that Armenia has no diplomatic relations with Turkey, and that many Armenian citizens may be worried about their personal data security, the Ambassador said: “Personal data protection is a very high value for us, and we can guarantee that no personal data will be available to external users. Let me add that the office will be headed by an Armenian representative and employees will be exclusively citizens of Armenia”.
