The European Parliament and the Member States of the European Union (EU) announced, this Tuesday, June 13, 2023, having reached an agreement on the digitization of the visa procedure for the countries of the Schengen space.
This agreement should be ratified before entering into force, but will allow most applicants for a Schengen visa to carry out their online procedures on a single website, rather than a consulate.
Last March, the EU Council arose, a negotiation mandate aimed at digitizing and unifying the Visa Schengen Visa procedure.
This proposal establishes the possibility of requesting an online visa and replaces the current vignette-vision with a digital visa in the form of a barcode.
This initiative aims to make the visa application procedure more efficient and to improve the safety of the Schengen area. The new rules proposed will create a unified platform dedicated to visa requests.
A digital schengen visa will allow travelers in order to more easily request a visa and at the same time contribute to making the Schengen space safer.
Online requests will reduce the number of trips that travelers must make at the Consulate and will facilitate the process for national administrations.
At the same time, the digital visa will eliminate the risk of falsification and theft of the vignette-visa.
In addition, applicants will only have to present themselves to the consulate if they ask for a visa for the first time, if their biometric data is no longer valid or if they have a new passport.
