Schengen visa refused two times by the French consulate, how to appeal? [closed]

Question

I have been denied visa twice by the French embassy, how do I appeal?

Reason were subsistence and justification and purpose of intended stay not reliable. I am a working guy in an IT company. I gave all correct documents.

Can I send them an email?

Answer 1

Generally speaking, in France, any official business should be conducted through (registered) mail, not email. Anything else than a letter written in French will almost certainly be ignored and anything else than a formal appeal is very likely to be ignored too. Even if you want to try something informal by email (a recours gracieux), it should be a scanned signed letter. The consulate is under no obligation to answer but if you manage to make it sound like it would be a slam dunk in court, it might convince them to back down to avoid losing on appeal.

For the rest, the procedure to appeal should be explained on the refusal letter. If it mentions a specific address in France (perhaps that of the Commission de recours contre les refus de visa d'entrée en France?), it's important to send the appeal there. That's an area of the law with a lot of procedural traps, it's very easy to see you appeal tossed out for some technical reason so you will probably require the assistance of a lawyer if you really want to go down that road.

And if you merely intend to write “I did everything right, please reconsider your decision”, it's not going to work. You need to have precise arguments, citing all the relevant law and explaining why they took the wrong decision in light of the information you already submitted. Appeals tend to take a long time (1-2 years) so it really only makes sense if you have a strong legal case and don't see any other way to force the consulate to accept it.

Alternatively, if you want to submit new information, the logical route if to lodge a fresh application. But since you have already been refused a visa twice, submitting more-or-less the same info for the third time is unlikely to bring any satisfaction. You need to have a very strong application, addressing all the concerns with additional documentation and preferably have someone with a legal background review your application as well.

You also need to understand that submitting the documents is a means to an end, namely convincing the consulate that you fulfil the conditions. For example, if you don't have any regular income, submitting three bank statements will not help you. That's probably not the issue here because you do have a job but the point is that if you appear to have a risky profile, the consulate can decide not to issue a visa even if you submit all the required documents.

It's unfair but for many people, getting a visa is simply impossible without a big change to their fortune and life conditions (or political connections).

Finally, as pointed out in the comments, if you went through an agent, you might want to ascertain that the refusal is genuine and that your application has indeed been forwarded to the consulate. Some unscrupulous agents simply pocket your money without doing anything and then give you a forged refusal letter.