Hey Everyone,
this is Grant Thomas from Visas Association,
and welcome to another Q&A session where we answer your questions.
So the question we've got is "I'm applying with a group and family.
Do I need to provide a copy of every document for each member?"
This is a great question and it is highly
important to understand, especially if you're traveling in a group
or a family. Because if you are traveling in a family
with children, know that as parents, you need to provide evidence that you are
going to sponsor and cover the children that are going to be traveling with you.
So obviously, they don't have an income,
they can't prove income tax returns,
they probably don't have enough money in their bank accounts,
which means that you will be the one providing for them financially.
Now, do you need to provide a document for every single one?
Yes. The short answer is absolutely,
you do. Each application is for every individual.
It's the same as you applying for a passport.
You can't just go and fill in one form and get a passport
for every single family member. The Schengen Visa is the same.
You're applying for a Schengen Visa for an individual.
So the same logic applies here.
When you complete a visa application form - if you got a family
of five, three children, two parents, there will be five application forms.
The key difference is that for yourself
and your partner, your forms will talk about how you are
going to fund your own travel and that you will be the ones traveling together.
But then for your children's forms, the forms will actually outline that they
are traveling with their family and that the sponsor is the parents of the trip.
This makes it very simple for you to understand that these are the key items.
The additional value to this is when you
go and get certified copies of your bank, statements of your income tax return, etc.
You can actually just get three or four
different copies of the same document certifications and include them in every
single application. Which means that when you go to get a certified copy of your
income tax return, just get another couple of copies certified as well so that you
can put them in one of the children's applications.
Now, sometimes you apply and they'll
kind of bundle them together and make it a little bit easier.
But our advice is to always expect the worst,
which means that two different people might review two different applications
and they might not know that they are your children.
So in your cover letter for each person as
well, talk about the family traveling together, show tickets of everybody flying
together, show activities and booking the Colosseum together,
etc, etc, Because you're traveling as a family,
everyone will have tickets and everything together.
So to get into a little bit more detail,
each individual member of the family will have their own
set of documents and their own set
of requirements, and they'll be slightly different.
So yours will be around your financial means, your payslips,
your bank statements, your income tax returns, etc, etc.
And so they will need to be bundled in for your application and for theirs.
The flights, accommodation, etc, are slightly different.
So you will need to have flights in the names of each one of the children.
So this can be reserved
flights is completely fine.
So you'll need your flight reservations for each child and they will need to go
into their documents and their application.
So it doesn't need to be included in yours.
It just needs to be included in theirs.
And so their cover letter will say, I'm traveling with my parents who are also
applying for a Schengen Visa at the same time.
And you can see their income statement here, that book flights here, etc.
Which means that whoever is reviewing it says, "yes, this makes complete sense".
Same with the photos.
You can't have a family photo.
It needs to be each individual person at different times.
For the children, you will need to fill out and write a full sponsor form.
So, complete the same form, replace the children's names,
sign at the bottom and include it in their submissions as well.
The cover letter for everyone needs to be different.
So most of the children can have the exact same cover letter: traveling with parents, etc.
But yours and your partners will need to be very similar,
but completely different, which is: we are traveling with our kids,
they're coming with us, we're funding them.
We're going to see these sites, etc.
And those are really sort of the key differences to it.
So, the short answer is, does every member need to apply?
The answer is yes, because every single person needs to have a valid Visa.
The difference as well is when you're
applying for a Schengen Visa is the cost of the Visa fee.
So adults, which is anybody above the age
of 12, is approximately 80 Euros at the moment.
Children between
6 to 12 is about 40 euros, and anyone below six is free,
so it's not going to make a big difference because you are booking flights or
reserving flights and Visas Association can help you with reserving flights.
But just know that this is the process you have to follow.
So the answer is yes and hopefully added
a little bit more value in this video for you so that you can understand
a little bit more about what you do in each stage.
So if this video has been
valuable to you and helped you out and given you the answers you're looking
for, can you please click the "LIKE" button below?
Because that helps other people
in the exact same situation that you are who are trying to apply
for a Schengen Visa get visibility of these videos as well.
Instead of just crawling the Internet. And whilst you are there,
can you please click the "SUBSCRIBE" button?
Because the requirements for the Schengen region do change quite regularly.
And what we do is we create new videos that we send out to people like yourself
just to say, "hey, did you know that these things have changed?"
And it means that if you are still applying for a Schengen visa,
you're able to change your documents to comply with the new requirements.
And then what I've done is linked to a couple of other videos that should
help you a little bit further in your application process.
And so feel free to check them out.
And from me to you,
good luck with your Schengen Visa application and I hope you have
a fantastic trip around Europe once you get approved.