Cape Verde recorded the highest number of Schengen visa application rejections in 2022, with 844 rejections recorded for every 100,000 people, while the total number of applications filed by these nationals reached 17,572.
SchengenVisaInfo reports that 5,055 visa applications filed by Cape Verdeans were denied in 2022, representing 28.7 per cent of all applications filed, indicating that every third person in the country had received a visa application rejection in 2022.
Kosovo and Suriname follow the list as second and third countries with the highest visa application denied per capita, with 722 and 548 denials per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively. This means that every ninth Kosovar and fifth Surinamese has received a negative decision on their application, as the Schengen Statistics data reveals.
In addition, it is estimated that 11.2 per cent of Kosovo’s population was denied visas, accounting for 13,674 applications compared to 20.1 per cent of Surinamese nationals, totalling 3,416 applications.
Furthermore, the United Arab Emirates had 442 rejections per 100,000 people, while 22.4 per cent of the population were denied visas, indicating that every fourth person received a refusal in their application. In total, 42,105 applications filed by Emiratis were rejected in 2022.
The other three nationalities that followed next for the most rejected applicants include Algerians, Tunisians and Lebanese. In total, 393 visa applications were rejected per 100,000 people in Algeria, followed by 392 rejections recorded among Tunisian applicants and 340 among Lebanese.
In general, 45 per cent of the population in Algeria was denied visas in 2022, followed by 29 per cent of the Tunisian population and 18.3 per cent of the Lebanese population, with the two latter nationalities having 48,909 and 18,232 rejected applicants, respectively. The number of denied applications is especially high for Algerian citizens, who received 179,409 negative answers.
Consequently, Algerians have scored the highest expenditures for rejected applicants, with €31.93 million spent and are the nationality with the highest number of denied applications for 2022.
The list of top ten nationalities with the highest rejection rates of applicants per 100,000 inhabitants is further concluded with Qatar, Morocco and Armenia, which had between 200 and 350 rejected applicants.
More specifically, the 325 rejected applicants are recorded for 100,000 Qatari nationals, indicating that 8,837 visa applications were denied, accounting for 11 per cent of the total population that were denied visas. In other words, every ninth applicant from Qatar was denied a visa application last year.
While every fourth Moroccan received a negative answer on their application, the total number of denied applicants reached 119,346 in 2022. This means that 45.7 per cent of the population was denied visas, and rejections per 100,000 people reached 315.
Moreover, 283 people in Armenia were denied a visa per 100,000, concluding the list of the top ten nationalities with the most denied visa applications per 100,000 people.
The share of the population denied visas in Armenia reached 12.7 per cent in 2022. This means that every eighth person in Armenia was a rejected applicant – one of the highest rates in this list.
