French Ambassador Sujuro Seam [Source : Twitter]

Fijians will be able to apply for the European Schengen visa in Suva from September.

This comes more than two years since the French Embassy closed its visa section.

Fiji nationals wishing to travel to Europe have had to incur the additional cost of travel to either Vanuatu, Australia or New Zealand to apply for their visa since 2017.

French Ambassador Sujuro Seam says this will all change in less than three months with the embassy out-sourcing its visa service.

“It’s been my priority since I arrived to reestablish the way for Fijians citizens to apply for visas locally here in Suva so the scheme we put in place is that we will contract a company, VFS which will do the visa application process for us here in Suva, it’s going to be at the Suva Business Centre where already it is possible to apply for visa’s for Germany or Norway.”

Ambassador Seam says the equipment for the visa applications will arrive in Fiji next month.

The equipment will be tested by the contractors and embassy staff before going online in September.