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Top 10 Schengen Countries of 2017 Revealed

The Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission has published interesting information regarding the number of short-term Schengen visas issued by the European Union countries. As these visas are mostly used for business and leisure travel, they give an interesting insight on the popularity of different countries.

Hotels in Paris and other popular European cities are likely not to suffer from the small number of foreign guests as once again France issued more visas than other countries. In 2016, the country received 3,265,919 visa applications, and that number only grew in 2017. In 2017, France received 418,485 more visa applications. In total, the country issued 3,161,274 visas, 965,661 of which were multiple-entry short-term visas.

Not surprisingly, Germany occupies the second place in terms of visa applications. Last year, the country received 2,049,055 short-term visa applications and issued 1,857,770 visas. Italy got the third place with 1,850,260 visa applications and 1,703,693 approved visas. Just like France, Germany, and Italy were in the same positions in 2016.

Spanish resorts and amazing hotels in Madrid or Barcelona continue luring numerous foreign guests. The country scored fourth in terms of Schengen visa applications and received 40,428 more requests than in 2016. The remaining six countries in the top ten are the following – Greece (981,091 visas issued), Finland (814,047 visas issued), Poland (789,343 visas issued), Czech Republic (594,225 visas issued), Netherlands (550,910 visas issued), and Switzerland (451,528 visas issued).

If analyze the number of issued multiple-entry visas, the rank looks different. Here Germany is the leader, followed by Italy. France is in the third position with Greece, Finland, and Spain catching up. Italy is the absolute leader in terms of the share of multiple-entry visas in the total number of visas. In total, the EU countries issued 8,677,376 multiple-entry visas in 2017. Iceland occupies the last place with only 5082 issued visas of this type.

Not many casual tourists know about the existence of Limited territorial validity visas. Nevertheless, countries continue issuing them. Germany and Switzerland are in the first and second positions in the rank respectively. The first country issued 34,892 visas, and the second one issued 28,018 visas of this type. Other countries in the rank are Greece, Austria, Sweden, Italy, Spain, France, Slovenia, and Norway.

22.05.2018

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