German Foreign Ministry Building
German embassies abroad are increasingly outsourcing visa application processing to private firms, which thus gain access to confidential data. After an article on this topic appeared in the German newspaper Tageszeitung, the German Foreign Ministry confirmed that one of its outsourcing partners is the Indian company VFS Global.
An official representative of the German Foreign Ministry told Deutsche Welle that, on behalf of the German government, this company accepts applications for various categories of visas and passports, including Schengen visas. During application processing, VFS Global collects, uses, transmits, and manages personal and biometric data of people applying for visas.
VFS Global visa service centers are also located in Ukraine and Russia. Those wishing to obtain a German visa must submit an application to one of these centers, and after appropriate processing, it will be forwarded to the German consulate or embassy. The documents provided must include a passport, personal and biometric data, including fingerprints. In addition to the consular fee, applicants must also pay for the outsourcing company's additional services and consent to the collection and processing of personal data.
By using outsourcing companies, the German government is trying to reduce costs and cope with the growing number of visa applications. VFS Global is a world leader in this field.
According to the company's website, it provides services to 56 government clients, its visa centers are located in 129 countries, and their number recently reached 2,377. Since its founding in 2001, the company has processed over 154 million applications.
"It is much cheaper for both authorities and taxpayers to outsource the administrative part of the pre-visa process," says VFS Global official representative Peter Brun in an interview with journalists. "Consular departments do not need to equip special premises or hire additional staff to receive applicants; it also eliminates endless queues at dozens of document submission windows."
Nevertheless, some politicians in Germany are concerned about this trend. "By using outsourcing partners, the state completely relinquishes control over an area where the possibility of corruption is extremely high," says Bundestag deputy from the Alliance 90/The Greens party, Omid Nouripour, in an interview with the German newspaper taz.
VFS Global official representative Peter Brun rejects accusations that the company is prone to corruption. According to him, this is fundamentally impossible. "What would be the point of bribing us? We don't make any decisions. We just check that applicants have filled out all forms correctly and submitted all necessary documents. We can't even influence the speed of document processing," he says.
Some express concerns about passports and other personal data falling into the hands of a private company. For example, in 2007, due to an error, 50,000 visa applications processed by VFS Global and the British Foreign Office were publicly accessible online.
Bundestag deputy from the Left Party, Sevim Dagdelen, believes that control over visa services should remain in the hands of the state "on a non-alternative basis." Only in this way, she is convinced, can "arbitrariness be excluded and full security guaranteed." "Visa issuance is a guarantee of reliable actions by state bodies within the framework of functioning legislation. And in this case, no circumvention measures should be taken to save money or increase the profits of third parties," the German deputy asserts in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
Moreover, according to her, under EU law, embassies of EU countries must schedule visa application appointments free of charge within two weeks, and the use of private contractors is permitted only "in exceptional circumstances."
The German Foreign Ministry rejects these accusations. "Internal checks are still carried out by employees of consular departments and embassies, and only they have access to the common database of Schengen area countries. The decision to issue or refuse a visa is also made at German diplomatic missions—outsourcing firms have nothing to do with it," says an official Foreign Ministry representative.
VFS Global press secretary Peter Brun also emphasizes in an interview with Deutsche Welle that his company only handles administrative tasks. "The government sets very clear tasks for us," says Brun. "We only receive and process data and then pass it on to consulates or the embassy. As soon as a decision is made to issue or refuse a visa, we destroy the data. We do not store or analyze it."
The German Foreign Ministry confirms Brun's words. "Visa service centers where visa applications are accepted are not located on consulate premises. Employees of the outsourcing company do not have access passes to the visa departments of consulates, except for the room where documents and passports are handed over. In addition, the embassy conducts regular unannounced inspections of its outsourcing partners' activities," says a representative of the German Foreign Ministry.
The Foreign Ministry claims that the contract obliges outsourcing companies to comply with German data protection laws regardless of the company's location. Personal data must be stored exclusively on servers located in the European Economic Area – in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, or Norway.
"At the request of the German Foreign Ministry, the Indian company VFS Global has placed all its servers on German territory," says a representative of the German diplomatic agency. "Furthermore, the company may only store in its system the information necessary for scheduling an appointment at the visa service center. Outsourcing firms are prohibited from storing personal and biometric data, such as fingerprints, in their system."