In short - IMPORTANT:

For some professional activities it is required to report your planned professional actions to the responsible German bodies or even to get a Pre-approval of the responsible German bodies like the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) for dependent work activities or Immigration authority (Ausländerbehörde) for independent work activities.

Please note that these requirements need to be verified within your application!

As the obtaining of the approval takes some time, we strongly recommend to ask the hosting company in Germany to approach the responsible German bodies for a Pre-approval (“Vorabzustimmung”) and hand it in along with your application to fasten the process.

Without this pre-approval you can still assure a fast visa process by providing additional forms to your application.

A Schengen visa is generally issued with the condition that “employment is not permitted”.

Numerous activities are not permitted in Germany with such a requirement, even for stays of less than 90 days, others only if certain requirements are met and others are only permitted for a certain number of days within a year.

In order to classify whether your stay qualifies as gainful employment, it is generally not crucial whether remuneration is paid by the inviter in Germany.

In practice, difficulties arise again and again because the planned activities are not explained in the visa application or are explained inadequately in the application documents.

Since both the applicants and the inviting business partners in Germany are violating immigration laws if during checks by authorities in Germany it becomes apparent that the planned activity was not permitted with the issued visa but would have required a special condition, it is important that the planned activities are presented clearly and clearly for third parties in the application documents, without the use of internal technical terms and abbreviations. Only then can the visa office be in a position to properly examine the application and point out possible legal difficulties or, if necessary, obtain necessary approvals from other German authorities in the visa process.

If the planned activity constitutes gainful employment and requires special conditions, this generally requires the

1. consent/approval of the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit – BA) for employed activities OR
2. consent of the responsible immigration authority at the place of business of the inviter in Germany for self-employed activities.

Obtaining consent delays the procedure at the visa office. We therefore recommend that the inviting company in Germany seek the so-called “pre-approval” from the relevant authorities in advance and then submits this directly with the application documents in the visa process. If this is not possible or not desired, we ask you to submit the additional documents listed here when submitting your application so that the necessary participation process can be initiated promptly by the visa office.

Please note that the visa office can only obtain the consent of the responsible authorities in Germany as part of the visa process. If the consent of the Federal Employment Agency (e.g. in the case of study-related internships for students) or notification to the Federal Employment Agency (as in the case of activities within the framework of work contracts) is required, this must be done by the inviter before applying for the visa and the corresponding proof must be enclosed Must be submitted when applying for the visa.

To obtain advance approval from the inviting company in Germany, please contact the responsible office at the Federal Employment Agency for employed employment; for self-employed activities, please contact the responsible immigration authority directly.

Below we have summarized for you the most common case groups in practice in India, the information required in the visa process and the legal peculiarities.

You can't assign your individual case here and would like to clarify possible special features in advance? Then please send us an email with a detailed description of the matter. Please note that an answer to your query is only possible if the matter is not already presented here. Please also note that feedback can take several days depending on how busy the visa office is.