"Half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the failures is perseverance."
Appealing a Visa Refusal
A refusal to issue a German visa can be appealed in court — it's important to meet the procedural deadline and prepare a convincing justification of the purpose of the trip.
Steven Paul Jobs
Many of our readers are well aware that trips to European countries aren't always just about tourism and leisure. Cooperating with local companies, building business contacts, and running one's own business rank second among the purposes of visits to this part of the continent. Germany is one of the most economically developed countries in the world, and doing business or research there is both profitable and prestigious. However, it is not possible to cross the state border without holding the appropriate permit document. Citizens of Russia, as well as of many other post-Soviet countries, need a specific type of visa to visit Germany for business purposes. In such cases, the best solution is a business visa, which is recommended not only for entrepreneurs but also for people planning to attend a professional or educational event. Other purposes for visiting the country may include establishing business contacts, journalism, arriving as part of an official delegation, research, exchanging experience with foreign colleagues, and similar purposes.
This visa, which can be used repeatedly for business trips, belongs to the Schengen visa category C. Its maximum period of validity is 6 months from the date of approval, and it permits a stay abroad of no more than 90 days. One common mistake among laypeople is to assume that holding a business visa allows one to conduct business and entrepreneurial activity in Germany over an extended period. In reality, the visa only grants short-term entry permission for business purposes. Every interested party should study the key criteria for obtaining entry rights in advance, so as not to lose an attractive opportunity to visit the country due to avoidable mistakes, should the need arise.
A refusal decision may be issued for reasons common to all types of visas: the stated purpose of the stay not matching the actual circumstances; insufficient grounds for entry;
insufficient funds for the planned length of stay; an entry ban into the country on any grounds; or if the documents submitted to the embassy for the visa are found to be forged, invalid, or expired.
Clients quite often come to our law firm asking for assistance in obtaining various types of Schengen visas, including for visiting Germany for business purposes. With properly prepared documents and in the absence of insurmountable aggravating circumstances, obtaining this type of visa presents no particular problems. We will describe one successful example from our legal practice in this article.
Our client was a middle-aged man named Roman (name changed). He was one of the business partners in a small company running a hotel business in Berlin. In the company's founding documents, he was listed as director, while the day-to-day operational business was run by a Prokurist. A Prokurist is a trusted representative of a company holding a special power of attorney (Prokura) to conduct various transactions, while the company's owner and director retain the right to oversee their execution. When signing transactions, a Prokurist must add a reference to their Prokura next to their name and may not delegate this authority to anyone else. The fact that a company has appointed a Prokurist must be properly registered and reflected in the commercial register. Roman would fly to Berlin from time to time for working meetings with his second business partner. He would, of course, also visit the mini-hotels operated by the company, oversee operational processes, make strategic decisions in coordination with his business partner, and make necessary adjustments whenever problems arose in day-to-day operations. In substance, his visits to Germany served purely business purposes, not tourism or anything else. Consequently, in Roman's case, the correct solution was to obtain a business visa for regular, short trips to Germany of no more than 90 days within a six-month period. Initially, our future client handled this matter himself: he gathered a set of documents and submitted them to the German embassy in Moscow, where he permanently resided. It should be noted here that Roman genuinely had every basis and prerequisite for obtaining the corresponding visa. Unfortunately, however, he was unable to properly explain his situation to the embassy staff. In their view, since the company had officially appointed a Prokurist — an authorized representative permanently managing the company's day-to-day business — the director's presence in Germany was not necessary for the company's purposes. During his embassy interview, Roman was unprepared for such questions and lacked sufficient arguments and documentary evidence of the need to visit the country on a regular basis. As a result, he was refused a Schengen visa, which is what led him to turn to our law firm.
Roman's case was taken on by a lawyer specializing in immigration law matters.
He listened carefully to the client, reviewed the available documents, and clarified exactly how often and for what purpose Roman planned to visit Germany. As it turned out even at the first consultation, Roman genuinely had every basis for obtaining a business visa specifically. During his visits to the country, Roman was, in fact, mainly occupied with running the company's current operational and organizational matters. Moreover, he spent a considerable amount of time at the mini-hotels under the company's management. There were even occasions where he had to give instructions to hotel staff, oversee the Prokurist's organizational work, check all business divisions for smooth coordination, negotiate with partners, and so on. Naturally, given this level of personal involvement in day-to-day operations, a business visa was the most logical and correct solution. The only problem in our client's case was providing the embassy staff with exhaustive justifications backed by proper evidence. After discussing the prospects of the case with the lawyer, it was decided not to appeal the embassy's refusal of the Schengen visa, but instead to submit a new application, this time with a complete and exhaustive set of supporting documents.
Roman gave the corresponding instruction to our firm's lawyer, who immediately began preparing the relevant package of documents for the embassy. As part of this case, the necessary evidence was gathered to justify the reasons for regularly visiting the company, documents confirming the frequency of such visits, and evidence of Roman's intensive involvement in the firm's day-to-day activities. In addition, thanks to the guidance received from our firm's lawyer, our client was, this time, fully prepared for the embassy interview and could now answer any unexpected or tricky questions from staff clearly and confidently. As the Swedish director and writer Ingmar Bergman rightly put it: "Only those who are well prepared have the freedom to improvise." This time, the client's arsenal included documents gathered in line with the embassy's requirements, the necessary justification for obtaining the requested visa, and the readiness to correctly explain why Roman needed the visa. As one might expect, this story had a happy ending — literally a week after the documents were submitted to the German embassy in Moscow, our client informed us that a positive decision had been made to issue the visa for a period of one year, and nothing now stood in his way of regularly visiting the country for the purposes he had planned. The client was fully satisfied with the lawyer's work and asked for permission to turn to our law firm again in the future for any legal matters.
Here, we would once again like to draw our readers' attention to the fact that having genuine grounds for obtaining a visa, or for relocating to Germany, does not by itself guarantee success. Someone inexperienced in such matters may, while gathering and preparing documents, overlook or fail to account for important facts that could tip the scales in their favor, and may also become flustered during the interview and provide incorrect or unconvincing explanations, which can affect the decision made by the officials responsible. As the old saying goes: "everyone should stick to their own trade." If visiting Germany for tourism or on a business trip is on your agenda, or if you have made the momentous decision to relocate to the country, we invite you to a consultation with the highly qualified and experienced lawyers at our firm, who are able to find the best solution for you and take on all the legal aspects of this cumbersome process. We are confident that, with a competent and dedicated approach, a positive outcome will never be long in coming.
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