eu-com-schengen-coop

The EU Delegations main role in the LSC has been, to Chair these meetings, facilitate the
discussions and draft and distribute the minutes and provide any other support requested by the
Missions. The cooperation from and among the Missions is extremely good and all LSC activities
and tasks are carried out on a burden- sharing basis.
According to some of the LSC members they intend to share this common report with their
headquarters.
3. State of play
3.1 Application of the Visa Code
The Missions in Colombo provided several inputs (in compliance with the request of EU
headquarters) for the revision of the visa code which took place during this reporting period.
The Schengen missions and the EU Delegation continued to show full preparedness to ensure the
smooth running of tasks to be carried out in LSC under the Visa Code. The Schengen missions in
Colombo are fully implementing the visa code.
Some of the difficulties encountered in implementing the visa code included: While some missions
are satisfied with the collection services provided by the common local service provider others were
not fully satisfied with their service, but were forced to continue with them due to the lack of
alternative service providers; there were concerns that the service provider collecting applications
in the newly established centre in Jaffna was charging more than what is being charged in
Colombo; there were incidents of different missions being approached by the same visa seekers for
the same trip (visa shopping) thus requiring cross checking which further burdened the tasks of the
visa officers in the missions; assessing the genuineness of visa requests for medical travel was also
a time consuming task for the visa officers; Some visa officers encountered problems of visa
rackets through marriage (locals showing documentation that they were married EU citizens)
which also required considerable verification by the missions to determine the genuineness of such
visa requests.
3.2 Assessment of the need to harmonise the lists of supporting documents
The Schengen missions in Sri Lanka have confirmed that they are all using the harmonized list of
support documents.
3.3 Exchange of information
Schengen missions continue to exchange information on the following:
Statistics
Schengen missions continued to compile monthly and quarterly statistics which were then
consolidated by the EU Delegation and discussions on the main trends were done periodically
during this reporting period.
Travel Medical Insurance (TMI's)
Upon the suggestion of a mission the local service provider VFS was asked to provide as an
optional service, a travel insurance service at the Joint Schengen Visa Application Centre. This
12893/14 PR/lm 162
DG D 1 A
EN