French Measures To Counter Scarcity And Sale Of Visa Appointments

The French Foreign Ministry announced a set of measures to confront the “scarcity and sale” of visa application dates through its consulates in Algeria and several African countries and other countries, and to limit the intervention of intermediaries to sell them to visa applicants.
In this context, it was stated in a response of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated December 11, 2022, to a written impeachment in the Senate directed by Senator Olivier Cadec, representing the French abroad, that the problem of intermediaries with regard to visa appointments is known to the Ministries of Interior and Foreign Affairs, and is closely followed by all parties concerned with it, pointing out that it is being raised more acutely in African countries.
In its response, the French Foreign Ministry considered that anticipating visa appointments through its consulates by intermediaries actually damaged France’s brand image, and made visa applicants believe that the only solution to obtain an appointment is to resort to these intermediaries to obtain an appointment.
The French Foreign Ministry spoke about a number of measures that were taken in the context of facing up to the scarcity of visa application deadlines through its consulates concerned in Algeria and other African countries, noting that these procedures are carried out in coordination with the authorities concerned with this file.
Among the announced procedures, the “Captcha” system stands out to verify that the user who wants to book an appointment is not information software or viruses but is a natural person, in addition to the restrictions imposed on each user account, one-time passwords, and communication campaigns carried out by diplomatic centers, and the consulate, which aims to remind users that booking visa appointments is completely free.
For some time, Algerian visa applicants from France and other European countries, like Spain, have been complaining about difficulties in obtaining appointments to deposit their files, given the lack of appointments on the websites designated for reservations, in return they are sold to them by intermediaries such as tourism and travel agencies or Internet cafe owners.
According to the testimonies of Algerians who contacted Echorouk, they were forced to buy appointments from intermediaries by paying large sums, which exceeded the cost of the visa and the rights of the company in charge of receiving the files, and in many cases reached 35 thousand dinars, in addition to the costs of the visa and the rights of the company.
A few weeks ago, French media reported that the sites for booking appointments for French visas in Algeria are constantly exposed to malicious software attacks that are able to bypass the approved protection measures, and book appointments for the owner of the agency that launched them, after which the appointments are sold to those who request them at exorbitant prices, and at the same time prevent users, as ordinary people are unable to access the section dedicated to booking the appointment, which explains the inaccessibility of thousands of appointment seekers.