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I'm a non-German EU citizen living in Germany and need to apply for a Chinese visa. According to the PRC's visa processing facility in Frankfurt:

If you are not applying for a visa in the country of your citizenship, you must provide the original and photocopy of your valid certificates of residence, employment or student status, or other valid certificates of legal stay provided by the relevant authorities of the country where the Visa Centre is located.

Does anyone know what sort of "certificate of residence" will satisfy them? I have the Amtliche Meldebestätigung für die Anmeldung issued by my city; will this be enough? If it's really necessary I could go get a Freizügigkeitsbescheinigung as well, but since obtaining that would cost me time and money, I'd rather not.

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    Hmm, I don't have a definite answer, but the "Meldebestätigung" is in fact the only "certificate of residence" there in Germany - apart from the official information in passports and citizen IDs of German citizens. Since the latter doesn't apply to you, the "Meldebestätigung" should normally be enough.
    – DCTLib
    Jun 9, 2015 at 19:37
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    One additional question: You are not from Crotia, right? Because for Croatian cities, the freedom to live abroad in the EU is not fully implemented yet (source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… ) - in this case, you may need additional documents.
    – DCTLib
    Jun 9, 2015 at 19:41
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    No, I'm not from Croatia. I'm eligible to get a Freizügigkeitsbescheinigung; I just don't want to wait in line for three hours and pay €10 (or whatever it costs nowadays) if I can avoid it.
    – Psychonaut
    Jun 9, 2015 at 19:43
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    Well, your "valid certificate for legal stay" is your passport, and the "valid certificate of residence" should be the "Meldebescheinigung". Let's wait if someone has first-hand experience on whether this is enough for them. My informed guess is that it should be.
    – DCTLib
    Jun 9, 2015 at 19:49
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    The Freizügigkeitsbescheinigung does not exist anymore so like @DCTLib I don't see what they could possibly require (apart from the Daueraufenthaltsbescheinigung but that's after 5 years of residence).
    – Relaxed
    Jun 9, 2015 at 20:24

1 Answer 1

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I wanted to report back that I attended the visa processing centre last week to submit my application. As "proof of legal status" I brought my Meldebestätigung für die Anmeldung to show I live here and my latest Entgeltnachweis to show that I'm employed here. The visa staff had no idea what these were and, after I explained things, they seemed mildly annoyed that I had included such irrelevant documents in the application. They returned them to me before accepting the application for processing. All they kept was the signed application form (including my photo), my passport (and a photocopy thereof), and my hotel and flight bookings.

I picked up my visa earlier today without any problems.

So for me, no "proof of legal status" was required. YMMV.

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    Thanks for reporting back! Out of curiosity, where did you apply? It's not uncommon for different locations to enforce different rules.
    – lambshaanxy
    Jun 17, 2015 at 9:49
  • I applied at the Frankfurt office linked to in my question.
    – Psychonaut
    Jun 17, 2015 at 11:49

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