EU family member - apostille request
Hi all,
Looking for some clarification as I'm completely lost as to whether or not requests for EU family member visa is reasonable.
My husband and I (Irish Citizen) are intending to travel to Greece on 8th June. We submitted appliation mid April and could not secure an appointment, with VAC indicating no appointments available, they cannot accommodate manual appointments and essentially to check the website daily for cancelations. Turns out, plenty of ppointments were available but only if you selected premium services and can pay for the same.
We secured an appointment through premium service, and during the appointment the staff members indicated they would refuse to accept visa unless flight details were provided showing return back into the UK. Understand this isn't required, but anyways we provided to save any confrontation. Last year we also applied and initially visa was rejected, but this was an administrative error as it was treated as tourist rather than EU family member. Eventually we got an emergency appointment and this submission was approved. To avoid the same confusion this year I provided only the necessary documents (whereas last year, I was trying to be thorough and included bank statements, itinerary etc).
Visa application was submitted and now we have received an email stating that our marriage certificate needs an apostille stamp before they can accept. I've no idea if this holds true for EU family members? For context, the marriage certificate is from North of Ireland. It is recognised by Ireland (in NI we have dual nationality) and I used this to update my Irish passport to reflect married surname. Additionally, we supplied this very same certificate last year to the Greek embassy for the same visa type and it was accepted. We received visa, traveled to Greece and adhered to conditions.
Thanks if you've made it this far! SOLVIT are already involved and are monitoring, but the Greel embassy seem to be insistent on requiring the apostille stamp. Trying to manage my expectations, could we be rejected due to this? If yes, does anyone in UK have experience in obtaining apostille within tight timelines? Through my research it seems to take 20 days which would be too late. And express services you need to travel to London which isn't feasible with work.