Finland Times

 

File photo of immigration at the border station in Lappeenranta, Eastern Finland. Photo Lehtikuva.

The country’s missions in the foreign countries have processed a record of over 1.5 million visa applications in the year 2013 – a staggering 13% rise from the previous year.

 

According to a foreign ministry press release, Finnish missions abroad processed a total of 1,569,851 visa applications in 2013. 

 

In 2012, the number of visas processed was 1,391,860. The number of visa applications to be processed has been growing strongly over the past six years. In 2007, 644,800 visa applications were processed.

 

More than 95% of all visa applications filed at the foreign missions were processed by Finland’s four diplomatic missions in Russia. As in previous years, the single biggest recipient of visa applications was the Finnish Consulate General in St Petersburg, which processed 1,204,667 applications.

 

The year before, the number of applications processed in St Petersburg was 1,030,948, which means there had been an increase of 17%. 

 

The Consulate General in St Petersburg is also the office with the highest number of Schengen country visas processed in Russia. The number of applications also increased slightly in the two other offices of the Consulate General of St Petersburg – Petrozavodsk and Murmansk. 

 

In Moscow, 142,949 visa applications were processed, up 2% from the year before.

 

Other Finnish missions that received more than 5,000 visa applications in 2013 were the embassy in Kiev (16,804), the Consulate General in Shanghai (7,840) and the embassies in Bangkok (7,793), Beijing (7,029) and New Delhi (6,170). 

 

The number of visa applications rejected by Finnish missions abroad in 2013 totalled 14,197.