Axel May // Photo credit: Stefano Rellandini / AFP
This Monday, January 1, France opens its “Olympic consulate”. This structure is intended to centralize all visa applications submitted by members of the “Olympic family” who will come to the Paris Games next summer.
How to manage the influx of visa requests in view of the Games? But also avoid processing times being too long or even files getting lost along the way? The solution found by the Ministry of the Interior and that of Foreign Affairs is to set up a procedure dedicated to the Olympic Games and which will be completely dematerialized.
That is to say that the people concerned will be able to send their file to the organizing committee of the Games which will transmit them to an “Olympic consulate”. This new entity will centralize all the requests from what we call the Olympic and Paralympic family: athletes, institutions, journalists, etc. Which represents in total nearly 70,000 people.
70,000 visa applicants affected
Concretely, the procedure will be limited to the collection of biometric data in consular posts located abroad or in the “visa” centers attached to them, without requiring the entry of a request on the France-Visas platform. Once issued, the dematerialized entry ticket to the national territory will be integrated directly into the Olympic accreditations.
This new system does not concern the general public who hold tickets, who will have to follow the usual procedure to apply for a visa.