Did any spouse try for an entry at the external border?

[LiveSlowDieWhenever]

Greetings,

I have used the search utility prior to creating this post but I could not find any post related to my question that fully covers it.

I am non-EU spouse, for almost a year the consulate of my wife's country forced me to hunt for a slot in VFS system even though I mailed them several times that I don't want to use third party agencies for my visa application. It was due to the slots being automatically stolen by the bot software and VFS' website being clunky. I notified the consulate on these issues providing details, after a while they texted me this:

Dear Sir,

As a spouse of the EU citizen you have dedicated application path in the VFS visa center – C type “EU family member category”. You can book you appointment easily – free slots are there and EU family members are booking their appointments.

If you prefer to submit your application at the Consulate you are entitled to do it. Please send us the scan of the documents confirming your status of the EU family member

Then in my reply:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your reply and for clarifying the process. I would prefer to submit my application directly at the consulate.

As requested, I have attached the following documents for your review:

Formul B (International Marriage Certificate).
Oofficial extract of civil status record - both countries
These documents were obtained from official websites today. Additionally, I have an invitation from my wife, valid until March 3, 2025, which I can also provide if necessary.

Could you kindly confirm whether an appointment will be arranged for me after reviewing these documents, or if I may walk in on any given date to submit my application?

Thank you for your attention and assistance.

Kind regards

Then they backtracked and replied with

Dear Sir,
Applicants, whose family members are Polish nationals, do not meet simplified visa procedure requirements and must apply for a Schengen visa under general rules.
You can book your appointment at the visa center under the dedicated PL family member visa category – nearest free slots are on Monday 13.01.2024.

As a member of the family of PL citizen you are not paying visa fee on the basis of your form B.

Besides that visa assessment procedure is standard thus all the listed documents for family visit are requested

As if they did not know from my earlier mails that my spouse is their own national, however, long story short, even though I provided them relevant Visa Code articles, they refused to accept my application at the consulate and forced me to use VFS, this was extremely hard, for 3 days I did not sleep until the morning to hunt a slot before it gets botted but I managed to secure an appointment for C type.

All necessary forms were filled, required documents collected and sent. In the end they rejected my visa application with reasons:

justification of purpose and conditions of intended stay is not provided
10 being: above information is not reliable.
12 being: there are reasonable doubts as to authenticity of the documents supplied or as to the veracity of their contents

Now, I can't gather my head around on the fact that what type of justification is needed for visiting my wife other than she is being my wife? I still included an intent letter where I openly said the purpose of the trip is to make up for her birthday that I missed.

And how those are not reliable if they are marked as "not provided" in the first place? First they tell me justification and the conditions are not provided, then they tell me it is not reliable. And lastly, authenticity of the documents supplied are scans of official papers we got from our national bodies, such as FORMUL B, marriage certificate via local government body, official "family reunification" invite in its original, scans of our ids, passports, my passport etc..

And the most damning part, they had 15 days to contact me and ask me questions, ask renewed papers or seek for clarification. This fortifies my idea that they simply did not like me sending them e-mails insisting on applying at the consulate and reminding them EU laws, and proceeded with bad faith to use loopholes because "doubts" can derive from everything if you want to feel doubt.

TLDR;

From this point on, I don't know what else I can do other than just appearing on a land border of an EU country with my spouse, but I can't find proper information on this issue. Some say it won't be helping since my wife did not live anywhere other than her own country, some say it is possible because we will be exercising free movement, some say free movement only covers when she is officially resident in that target country, there are laws saying "being present" is enough for EU spouse at the border..

I still have travel insurance until march and my official family unification invite till march too, was there any experiences members here were able to enter via lets say Greece or Lithuania?

[Angel99]

EU citizen spouse can't apply for facilitated visa if it's to the citizen's country of origin unless some exceptions. Some EU countries allows that (Spain, Portugal and Czech Republic) though.

The reason for refusing you the visa is generic and Poland is known for refusing visas for Polish spouses from some countries.

Easiest is applying for visa to another EU country even if via VFS and showing intention of travelling together or meeting your spouse there (reserved flight tickets).

You could also get a gratis visa or entry stamp at the border but you have to find your way to Slovakia or Hungary land border. Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia might give you a tough time.