Hi,

I was wondering if anyone here has applied for the Belgian working holiday visa while they were outside of Australia?

My wife and I are currently living and working in the UK, but looking to move to Belgium next year under a working holiday visa.

The Belgian Embassy in Australia is telling me that we must apply for the visa *from within* Australia.

On the Belgian Embassy website it says, "Obtaining the visa may take four to six weeks or more according to the time of the year. Your visa will be valid six months if issued outside Europe or three months if issued in Europe.". This seems to imply that you can apply for it outside of Australia.

Obviously we don't want to go all the way back to Australia then to Belgium.

The emabssy clearly has final say, but I thought that if someone else has done it, then I'll keep at them! Otherwise I'll just have to drop it, which i don't want to do <img src="../images/emoticons/bbutbut.gif">

Cheers,
Dan.

Hi Dan,
I've never applied for the working holiday visa in Belgium, but I do know that any visas I was interested in applying for (partner visa, student visa) had to be done from Australia. I ended up going to live in Holland instead, for that reason, because Aussies can apply for visas from within NL.

Maybe that's worth a shot? Hope this helps, in any case.

Camilla
<img src="../images/emoticons/ysmile.gif">

Thanks for the info Camilla. I'm still waiting for the embassy to email me back...

I was happy to go to NL, but my wife had something against Amsterdam (crazy I know!), so it got vetoed.

Cheers,
Dan.

Hi Dan, not sure what a Working Holiday Visa is, as opposed to any other type of working Visa, but this may help. I am Australian, was offered a job here, and submitted all the paperwork for a work permit. This process takes about 4 weeks, and once I had the permit, I was supposed to front up to the Belgian Embassy in Canberra, and get my visa. The job needed me ASAP, so I got on a plane, and had my Work Permit delivered to me in Brussels, and started work the next day. I applied for my extended stay documents from here, skipping the passport stamped visa from Canberra, applying directly to the ministry of strangers, via Brussels commune., There is a loop-hole in the Visa application process, that says something like "if there is a significant hardship, you don't have to be in your own country to apply". We applied on the grounds that Australia is really far away, and expensive to get to, and I was already here.... this took 7 months to finalise, but I have my ID card etc now, and I did not have to go back to Australia..... So, maybe that is an option for you?

Thanks for your info kc_melb. I think things might be different for a working holiday visa - it's more of a favour to let you come over than a proper "you're going to contribute to the country" kind of thing.

I actually got a reply from the relevant authority in Belgium yesterday. Basically they said that if you're resident outside of Australia (I'm classed as a UK resident while on the work permit in the UK), then you can apply from outside Australia. So things seem to be ok. Fingers crossed.

Cheers,
Dan.