# Embassy of the Philippines, Stockholm

The Embassy of the Philippines in Stockholm is the diplomatic mission of the Republic of the Philippines to the Kingdom of Sweden. It is located on the island of Lidingö in Stockholm County, east of Stockholm city proper. Although the current embassy dates from 2020, the Philippines also maintained a previous resident embassy in Sweden between 1978 and 2012.

## History

The Philippines did not initially open a resident mission in Sweden when diplomatic relations between the two countries were established on January 17, 1947. An honorary consulate was first opened in 1970, and on November 9, 1978, José Manuel Stilianopoulos, then Philippine Ambassador to the United Kingdom, was accredited as the first non-resident Philippine ambassador to Sweden. The first physical resident embassy opened around a week later, headed by chargé d'affaires Rolando Libas, in Gamla stan, Stockholm's old town.
In 1982, Consuelo Arranz was appointed as the first resident Philippine ambassador to Sweden, serving until 1986. The Philippine Embassy in Stockholm at the time was the first Philippine diplomatic mission in the Nordic states, and when it opened it exercised jurisdiction over Denmark, Finland, Norway, and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, in addition to Sweden. On April 30, 2007, jurisdiction over Denmark and Norway was transferred to a newly opened embassy in Oslo, while jurisdiction over Finland was transferred to a newly opened embassy in Helsinki on November 12, 2009, opening the same year as new embassies in Ireland and Portugal.
After a massive expansion of the Philippines' diplomatic presence abroad during the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, in 2010 Senator Franklin Drilon questioned the need for embassies in countries with small Filipino communities, including a number of countries in Europe, and called for a review of the Philippines' diplomatic presence worldwide. This would lead to the closure of ten posts under Arroyo's successor, Benigno Aquino III, and ultimately to the closure of the Embassy on October 31, 2012. The closure was not without controversy: in February 2012, coinciding with celebrations commemorating the People Power Revolution, hundreds of people held a march in cold weather to protest the embassy's closure. Protesters called on President Aquino to reconsider his position as the local community was not consulted on the decision, especially considering the size of the local community in Sweden relative to other missions where there are smaller numbers of Filipinos, and Sweden's relative prosperity compared to other countries whose missions ought to be closed instead. A petition was also organized alongside similar movements in other affected countries, with signatures being gathered from Filipinos all over Sweden.
At the time, the embassy exercised jurisdiction over the Baltic states, which was subsequently transferred to the Philippine Embassy in Warsaw, and Sweden was placed under the jurisdiction of the Philippine Embassy in Oslo, which conducted monthly consular outreach visits. While there was no resident embassy in Sweden, relations were conducted through a reopened honorary consulate, led by Erik Belfrage, who led efforts to reopen the embassy.
By 2019, the Philippine government had begun considering reopening a resident mission in Sweden owing to deepening relations between the two countries, and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. announced that the Philippine Embassy in Stockholm would reopen, part of an expansion of the country's diplomatic presence under Aquino's successor, Rodrigo Duterte. Later that year, a landing team arrived to set up the new embassy, and on May 15, 2020, the embassy was reopened to the public, four years after Sweden reopened its embassy in Manila. The embassy's reopening, however, was overshadowed by Belfrage's death the month before due to COVID-19 amidst a pandemic of the disease.
After initially operating from temporary offices along Olof Palme Street in central Stockholm, the embassy moved to a new, permanent chancery on the island of Lidingö on November 1, 2020. Its jurisdiction was subsequently reduced to cover Sweden only with the reopening of the Philippine Embassy in Helsinki on October 4, 2024.

## Staff and activities

The Philippine Embassy in Stockholm is provisionally headed by a chargé d'affaires, pending the reception of a new ambassador appointed by the Philippine government. The current chargé d'affaires is Gines Jaime Ricardo D. Gallaga, while the last resident ambassador was Maria Lumen B. Isleta, who was appointed to the position by President Duterte on February 19, 2021. Prior to becoming Ambassador, Isleta, a career diplomat, served as Assistant Secretary of Foreign Affairs, working under the DFA's Office of American Affairs, and prior to that served as ambassador to a number of Asian countries, including stints at the Philippine Embassies in Jakarta and Vientiane. Her appointment was confirmed by the Commission on Appointments on March 24, 2021, and she presented her credentials to King Carl XVI Gustaf on October 19, 2021.
The embassy currently serves 15,000 Filipinos in Sweden. Passport renewals were initially still handled by the Philippine Embassy in Oslo, ostensibly due to delays in receiving passport issuing equipment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although it was able to handle all other consular transactions. The embassy officially began accepting passport applications on August 24, 2020.