Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, Russia, Tourism

"This kind of contract was indeed signed with the company that won an international procurement," told Britta Tarvis, representative of the Foreign Ministry.

VFS Global announced that 30 new visa centers will be opened in Moscow, Kingissepp, Tyumen, Surgut, Volgograd, Pyatigorsk, Cherepovets, Vladimir, Barnaul, Belgorod, Bryansk, Makhachkala, Saransk, Tula, Ryazan, Tomsk, Chita, Ivanovo, Kaluga, Kemerovo, Novokuznetsk, Kirov, Sochi, Kurgan, Kursk, Lipetsk, Orenburg, Penza, Izhevsk, Ulyanovsk.

Extra services will be provided also in the 30 existing VFS Global centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Pskov, Ivangorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaasan, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Veliky Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh, Samara, Novosibirsk, Kaliningrad, Saratov, Ufa, Perm, Vologda, Smolensk, Khabarovsk, Novorossiysk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, Petrozavodsk, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Chelyabinsk, Vyborg.

Thus, the total number of Russian cities, where Estonian visas can be applied for, is 59.

The rollout of all new operations is expected to be completed by mid-2019.

"The external service provider will accept Schengen visa applications from visa applicants at the service points, forward the applications to the consulate, deliver travel documents with issued visas or denial notices from the consulate to the visa center and issue travel documents with issued visas or denial notices to the visa applicants. When accepting visa applications, the applicant's biometric data is also collected at the visa center and a visa fee, that is a state fee, is also collected," Tarvis said.

Tarvis emphasized that the decision, whom visas will be issued to, will still be made by Estonian consular officials.

"The role of Estonian embassies and consulates will remain the same: the representations will make a decision regarding the Schengen visa application whether to issue a visa or deny the issuance," she said.

Tarvis said that most of the Schengen member states use the services of an external service provider. "There are several reasons for that: it enables to accept more applications per day, decrease waiting lists at larger representations and make the process more comfortable for applicants -- especially in countries where there could significant distances between the home town of an applicant and the closest representation," she said.

Once the decision is made to issue a visa, the embassy or consulate will print a visa sticker and sticks it into the travel document.

A certain amount of Schengen visa applications will still be accepted directly at the embassies, while the number varies across countries and representations. Long-term visa applications can be submitted only at an embassy or consulate as external service providers do not have that right.

VFS Global announced on Monday that in addition to Russia, the company's visa centers will start providing services for Estonia also in China, India, Belarus and Turkey.

According to VFS Global, the company is the world's largest outsourcing and technology services specialist for governments and diplomatic missions worldwide. It has 2,709 visa centers in 141 countries and it mediates its services to 61 countries.