Schengen from Islamabad, appointment waits, bank statements and refusals

We do not run a European group departure at the moment. This is written anyway, because after Baku it is the question we are asked most, and because the way the process actually works is badly explained almost everywhere a Pakistani traveller will look for it.

Nothing below is a promise about your application. It is the shape of the process, so you can plan around it instead of guessing.

What Schengen is, and what it is not

The Schengen area is a group of European countries that share a common short stay visa. A short stay visa issued by one of them is generally valid for travel in the others, which is why one application can cover a trip through several countries.

Two things it is not. It is not a work or study permission. And it does not cover the United Kingdom or Ireland, which run their own visas and their own applications. If your trip includes both, that is two processes, on two timelines.

The standard short stay visa allows a maximum of ninety days of stay in any period of one hundred and eighty days. That limit is counted across the whole area and not per country.

Which country you apply to

You do not choose. The rule is that you apply to the country that is your main destination, meaning where you are spending the most time. If your time is split evenly with no obvious main destination, you apply to the country you are entering the area through first.

This matters because each country's own arrangements differ: where its applications are received, how its appointments are booked, and how long its decisions take. Getting this wrong at the start means starting again.

The appointment, and why the wait is unpredictable

Most missions receive applications through a visa application centre rather than at the consulate counter itself. You book an appointment, you attend in person, and you give biometrics, which means fingerprints and a photograph taken there. If you have given fingerprints for a Schengen application recently they can sometimes be reused, and the centre will tell you whether that applies to you.

How long the wait for that appointment is depends on the country, on the city you are applying in, and on the season. It moves. Anyone quoting you a fixed waiting time, including us, is quoting you something they cannot control. The only reliable answer is to look at the booking system for the country you are applying to, as early as you can, and to treat the appointment date as the fixed point that the rest of your plan has to fit around.

One practical consequence. Do not buy anything you cannot get back before you understand what your appointment date is and what the mission expects you to have booked. Missions do ask to see a travel plan, and the form of booking they accept is on their own checklist. Ask what they will accept before you spend.

What the documents are actually for

The list differs by country and it is published by the mission. In general terms you are being asked to show four things, and it helps to read every document on the list as evidence for one of them:

• Who you are. Passport, photographs, the completed form.
• What you are going to do. Your travel plan, your accommodation, your return travel.
• That you can pay for it. Bank statements, employment or business records, and travel medical insurance meeting the minimum cover the mission states.
• That you will come back. Your job, your business, your family, your studies, your property. This is the one applicants prepare least and it is the one the decision most often turns on.

The bank statement carries more weight than most people expect, and it has its own article: what a bank statement is really being read for.

Reading a refusal

A refusal arrives as a letter with a standard set of reasons on it, and the relevant ones are ticked. The categories on that form are worth knowing before you apply, because they tell you what the file has to answer:

• The purpose and conditions of the stay were not justified.
• The information given about the purpose was not reliable.
• You did not show sufficient means to cover the stay, or the return.
• Your intention to leave before the visa expires could not be established.
• The documentation about accommodation or travel was not provided or not convincing.

Two things follow from that. The first is that a refusal is usually a statement about the file rather than about you, and sending the same file again produces the same file. The second is that the letter tells you whether you may appeal and by when. Read it properly, including the deadline, before deciding what to do next.

What we would tell you if you rang us

We would tell you that this process rewards starting early and punishes improvising, that the checklist published by the mission you are applying to beats any advice on the internet including ours, and that nobody can guarantee you a visa.

We would also tell you what we do run. On our own departures the visa is applied for by us as part of the package and you do not go to an embassy at all. That is a genuinely different experience from the one above, and it is the reason a lot of first trips out of Pakistan start somewhere other than Europe. You can see what we handle on the visa and which destinations we run.

Before you pay any operator a deposit for any destination, ask them one question, in writing: what happens to your money if the visa is refused.