Prince Albert II Receives Credentials from Four New Ambassadors at the Prince's Palace

Prince Albert II received the letters of credence from four new ambassadors to Monaco during a ceremony at the Prince's Palace on Thursday, October 22. Joanna Kempkers presented her credentials on behalf of New Zealand, Alfred Nguiabanda for the Gabonese Republic, Diedre Mills for Jamaica, and Ioannis-Miltiadis Nicolaidis for Greece, each formally establishing their mandate to represent their country in the principality.

The presentation of letters of credence is itself a diplomatic formality, the ceremonial handover of documents signed by each ambassador's own head of state that confirms their appointment and opens the way for them to begin their mission in Monaco. Prince Albert II held the ceremony at the Palace before following it with individual audiences for each of the four envoys.

Those one on one conversations covered bilateral relations between Monaco and each ambassador's home country, along with shared international priorities and potential cooperation in areas including economic development, culture and the environment, themes that have become a regular thread running through the principality's diplomatic engagements under Prince Albert II.

The addition of ambassadors from New Zealand, Gabon, Jamaica and Greece widens the spread of countries with a formally accredited diplomatic presence in Monaco, a small but increasingly international diplomatic corps built up around a principality whose own population numbers in the tens of thousands.