The processing time for the Schengen visa for travelling to Germany has been brought down to eight weeks and efforts are on to reduce it further, Georg Enzweiler, deputy head of mission at the German embassy here, said on Wednesday.

“Visa is an important issue. We are striving to get better with application times. The thing is, we would like to change it from today to tomorrow but bureaucracy takes its toll. We are working on that through various means. We have increased our staff substantially in Mumbai and I think the waiting time has substantially gone down,” Enzweiler said at a media conference here.

“We are at roughly eight weeks now. We hope to get better with regard to that because of course it is what we want. We don’t want to invite you here to promote tourism of Indians to Germany and then ask them to apply for a visa three years in advance.”

A Schengen visa is a short-stay (up to 90 days) visa that allows a person to travel to any member of the 27-country Schengen area of Europe for tourism or business purposes.

The delay in visa processing has been a damper for Europe travel.

The German embassy had in April issued an advisory, saying: “Due to a sharp increase in demand for Schengen visas, longer waiting times for appointments and longer visa processing times apply.”

“If you are planning to travel to Germany in the near future, please make an appointment with our external service provider VFS in time,” it said.