Finland granted over a million visas
Press release 1/2010
4 January 2011
In 2010, Finland’s diplomatic missions granted a record-high number – more than one million – Schengen visas, i.e. visas to enter a Schengen area country for a short stay. Last year the diplomatic missions processed a total of 1,020,400 visa applications and 1,008,829 applicants were granted a visa. In all, 795,936 applications were processed in 2009, so the increase on the previous year came to 28 per cent.
The one-millionth visa was granted at the Finnish embassy in Moscow on Boxing Day to a 27-year-old woman from the city of Ivanovo. Like many other Russian tourists, she was coming to Finland in early January for a brief visit.
In 2010, a total of 126,963 visa applications were processed in Moscow, which is slightly more than the year before (124,068).
As in previous years, the Finnish diplomatic mission to process the most visa applications was the Consulate General in St. Petersburg, where as many as 743,485 visa applications were processed. When the visas granted, visa denied and other decisions are added together, the one-millionth visa decision was made, in particular, in St. Petersburg just before Christmas. The number of applications in St. Petersburg rose by 36 per cent on 2009, when 546,520 visa applications were processed.
The number of visa applications also increased sharply at the Petrozavodsk and Murmansk branch offices of the Consulate General of Finland in St. Petersburg; the figures were 59, 157 visa applications processed in Petrozavodsk (46,027 in 2009) and 29,451 in Murmansk (19,311 in 2009).
The steep rise that occurred in Russia means that 94 per cent of visa applications submitted to Finland anywhere in the world were processed in Russia. The total for Russia, measured in the number of visa applications, was 959,056.
Aside from Finland’s diplomatic missions in Russia, more than 5,000 visa applications were processed by Finnish embassies in Kiev (11,824), New Delhi (6,728), Beijing (5,849) and Bangkok (5,802).
Last year, in all 10,335 visa applications were turned down by Finland’s diplomatic missions; this is about one per cent of all applications. The share of negative decisions varies considerably by country of location. The percentage of negative decisions was the highest at the Embassy of Finland in Abuja, Nigeria (63.9 per cent). At its lowest, the percentage was less than half a per cent (among others, in Murmansk and New York).
Additional information: Counsellor Vesa Häkkinen, Unit for Passports and Visas, Consular Services, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, tel. +358 9 1605 5219, mobile tel. +358 40 726 1379