Accordingly, place of birth is one essential piece of information on a passport for the identification of a person, and is mandatory to process Schengen visa applications.
At present, competent agencies in Spain is working with other member nations in the Schengen Area to analyze this issue at a technical level. Current regulations do not allow the issuance of a Schengen visa to Vietnam citizens possessing a passport in the new form as it lacks this critical birthplace information.
Therefore, until a decision can be reached by the competent central agencies in the Schengen Area as to the approval of the new form of dark blue Vietnamese passports, the Spanish Embassy in Hanoi will not process any Schengen visa applications of owners of a Vietnamese passport under the new form until further notice.
Schengen visa applications that are submitted with the previous passport form (with green cover) that has clear information on birthplace and is still valid are still processed as usual.
Those who plan to enter member nations of the Schengen Area should contact the corresponding embassies for further instructions and confirmations of related news to avoid any trouble that might be encountered when carrying out arrival procedures at internal national borders of member countries of the Schengen Area.
Right now, the Vietnamese Immigration Department still has to official response to this notice of the Spanish Embassy.
Before this, on July27, the German Embassy also released a similar notice on the refusal of processing visa applications for Vietnamese citizens owning a passport under the new form. Right after that, the Consular Department (under the Foreign Affairs Ministry) cooperated with the Vietnam Immigration Department to work with the German side to address the matter.
The temporary solution is for the Vietnamese Embassy in Germany to issue a confirmation in German about the place of birth for Vietnamese citizens using new-form passports, in case they need it to present to German authorities. To request such a document, Vietnamese citizens must fill out a form and attach necessary proofs of their birthplace such as their birth certificate or old-version passport.
