Leipzig: Italy rejected just 200 visa applications out of 50,000 requests
Almost all visas issued to citizens from Belarus are multiple-entry visas
The Belarusian (holding a Russian passport) suspected of the attempted attack involving drones and explosives at Leipzig Airport is believed to have entered Schengen Area on an Italian tourist visa, issued by the Italian Embassy in Minsk.
This is one of nearly 50,000
Failure rate close to zero
Last year, a total of 157,028 applications were submitted, with a rejection rate of 2.8 per cent. In this respect too, our country can boast a better record than Minsk: only 202 out of 50,912 applications were rejected, amounting to 0.4 per cent. By way of comparison, Germany (second in terms of the number of applications received) rejected 2.8 per cent of cases, whilst France (the third most popular destination) proved much stricter, with a rejection rate of 6.5 per cent.
Checks and the issue of multiple-entry visas
“We will carry out all the necessary checks,” assured the Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, noting that there is a specific procedure “for the granting of visas and, if there is no alert regarding individual persons, the visa is granted”.
Another anomaly regarding short-stay visas issued by Italia for Belarus is the prevalence of multiple-entry visas (MEVs), which allow the holder to enter the Schengen Area multiple times during the visa’s period of validity, without having to apply for a new visa for each trip. In 2025, these accounted for almost all of them: 50,709 out of 50,912 ‘applications’. Here too, a comparison with other countries is revealing: in Germany they accounted for 88 per cent, whilst in France the figure was only 71 per cent.
