Some foreigners who want to travel to the Netherlands are confronted with long waiting times applying for a short-stay Schengen visa.
All visa applications for the Netherlands that are submitted worldwide, usually through an external service provider such as VFS Global, are sent to the CSO in The Hague for review. The Consular Service Organization (CSO) is an independent service unit within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The organization processes all visa applications and applications for Dutch travel documents abroad.
At the moment, the CSO is unable to deploy enough capacity to process Schengen visa applications in a timely manner. This is partly due to COVID measures in the Netherlands, as a result of which many staff work from home, but also because the assessment of a visa application now takes more time than before the COVID crisis. Due to the entry ban for the EU, all visa applications must be checked to see whether they fall within an exception category of the ban.
According to a source, a solution is being worked on, including the use of extra staff and further automation. Nevertheless, the long waiting times at the external service providers such as VFS Global, who take the visa applications, will continue to exist for a while.
Visa-required travelers who urgently need to travel to the Netherlands, for example due to the death of a first- or second-degree relative in the Netherlands, are given priority when applying for a visa. They must then send an email to VFS Global with a clear explanation and substantiation of their situation.
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