Didier Verwaerde, Belgian Embassy, DRC says a visa applicant would go to the Belgian consulate, the French consulate and consulate of Greece and applied simultaneously in all these consulates hoping to get a positive decision from one of them. Hopefully this new system will tackle this practice. In priniciple, this doesn’t signal a change in who is issued with visa and Schengen member states retain their powers to grant them. And the number of applications continues to grow, with more than 6,500 applications recorded in four months in Schengen House. But the responses are still overwhelmingly negative.