Marriage Certificate With Mofa Legalisation Rejected By Swiss Embassy Bangkok For Schengen Visa

[Arkady]

Members planning to apply to the Swiss Embassy in Bangkok for Schengen visas for their Thai wives using the privilege of family members of EU citizens to apply direct to the Embassy for an accelerated free of charge visa with less documentation should be aware that the embassy does not accept a copy of your Thai marriage certificate with translation legalised only by the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They need further legalisation of the MOFA's legalisation by your embassy. My wife has obtained Schengen visas using the EU family member privilege at other embassies using just the MOFA's legalisation and the Swiss Embassy is the only one I am aware of that adopts this belt and braces policy of legalisation on legalisation. Although the embassy official insisted that this is in fact required by Schengen regulations, I have been unable to find any reference to this in the Schengen regulations or the relevant Lex Europeana. Governments are, however, entitled to demand sufficient evidence of the family relationship and I suppose the Swiss are entitled to take the view that other foreign embassies are more competent than the Swiss at determining whether legalisations by the Thai MOFA are forgeries or not. Be that as it may the only ways round this apparently superfluous requirement are either to apply to another Schengen embassy or apply to the Swiss Embassy without using the EU family member privilege via its outsource agency TLS which involves making an appointment online first and bringing copious copies of bank statements, flight and hotel bookings, evidence of employment and other tedious gunk as well as paying a visa fee.

I decided to bite the bullet and got the re-legalisation done for a cost that was slightly more than the visa fee saved but can be used again in future, either at the Swiss Embassy or in case other embassies decide to introduce the same requirement. To be fair to the Swiss the requirement is mentioned in their list of documents for EU citizen family members but the English version is quite poorly worded and I assumed that the requirement for legalisation by the EU citizen's embassy only applied to those married outside Thailand, since everybody else accepts with some logic that the Thai government is the competent authority for legalising Thai government documents and their translations to English.

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Edited July 27, 2012 by Arkady

[dennisroodman]

Hi Arkady,

I am experiencing a similar situation to the one you described above, and found your post very informative. I will need to follow the same route myself, but was hoping you could advise how long it took you to obtain the final legalised document.

Many thanks in advance,

Dennis

[Tony M]

I think the Spanish Embassy takes a similar line, or they used to do so with EEA Family Permits. But, there is a problem, in that the British Embassy does not legalise Thai documents ( unless they have changed their policy ), and it was necessary to get documents such as the marriage certificate apostilled in the UK.

[dennisroodman]

Ok to add some further detail, I am a UK citizen working in Switzerland, applying for a type D visa for my wife in Thailand.

I have sent a certified copy of our marraige certificate, which I obtained from the General Registrar Office in UK, to the Foreign and Commomwealth Office in the UK to be legalised with an apostil stamp. I am yet to receive this back, only sent on Monday.

But having done some further research I don't think this will be enough.

I now plan to have our original marriage certificate and english translation legalised by the Ministry of Foreigh Affairs in Bangkok, and then present this to the Swiss Embassy in Bangkok so they can further endorse/legalise is MoFa legalisations.

I suppose my question is how long will the MoFa and Swiss Embassy take to return the document to me?

Any information would be very well received,

Thanks,
Dean