Five new ambassadors walked into the Grand Ducal Palace on Friday 25 September and walked out as Luxembourg’s officially accredited diplomats. In a ceremony as old as the state itself, Grand Duke Guillaume received the letters of credence – and the letters of recall of their predecessors – from the ambassadors of Germany, Guinea, Bahrain, Namibia and India.
The names, for the record: Karsten Diethelm Geier for Germany, Aicha Nanette Conte for Guinea, Mohamed Ali Bahzad for Bahrain, Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari for Namibia, and Pranay Verma for India. Five countries, five envelopes, one centuries-old ritual.
What exactly is going on here? A letter of credence is, at its simplest, a letter of introduction – from one head of state to another, asking that the bearer be received as the sender’s personal representative. The practice goes back centuries, to a time when an ambassador really was the monarch’s own envoy at a foreign court. Today the ritual is codified in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, but its choreography still belongs to an older world: the formal audience, the sealed letters, the uniforms.
And what uniforms. The images released by the Court show an aide-de-camp in the Luxembourg army’s gala dress – the olive-green tunic, red epaulettes, the orange sash worn across the chest, a sword at the side – standing at attention inside the palace. It is the kind of picture that reminds you that behind every modern diplomatic relationship stands a small army of protocol, tradition and very sharp tailoring.
Why does the Grand Duke do this himself? Because in Luxembourg’s constitutional order, the Grand Duke is the head of state, and accrediting ambassadors is one of the classic prerogatives of a head of state – a role Guillaume V has been growing into since he marked a year on Luxembourg’s throne. Every ambassador posted to Luxembourg – whether from a neighboring giant or a distant partner – presents credentials to him in person. It is one of the quiet, regular duties of the crown: no speeches, no crowds, just the steady machinery of international recognition turning over.
The letters of recall matter too. Each new ambassador also delivered the letter recalling their predecessor, closing one diplomatic chapter as another opens. Embassies are permanent; ambassadors rotate. The ceremony marks the handover.
Now the five countries themselves, because the list is more interesting than it looks at first glance. Germany is the obvious one: Luxembourg’s great neighbor, its largest economic partner and the country with which it shares not just a border but a currency, a market and half a century of European integration. The German ambassador’s audience is always, in a sense, the most routine – and the most important.
Guinea, Namibia, Bahrain and India tell a different part of the story. They are a reminder that Luxembourg’s diplomacy is not confined to its neighborhood. A Grand Duchy of 680,000 people maintains active diplomatic relations across Africa, the Gulf and Asia – a network built on finance, development cooperation, and the simple fact that in multilateral diplomacy every voice carries weight, as Jordan’s delegation showed behind the scenes at the United Nations. When five ambassadors present their credentials on the same Friday, you are looking at a small country’s foreign policy in miniature: rooted in Europe, open to the world.
There is a pleasing symmetry in the timing, too. The credentials ceremony came just days before Luxembourg rolled out the red carpet for Finland’s President Stubb – the first incoming state visit of the new reign. One week, the quiet constitutional ritual of receiving ambassadors; the next, the full blaze of a state visit, not unlike the warm Paris welcome the Macrons gave King Abdullah II and Queen Rania. Between them, they show the two gears of the Grand Duke’s diplomatic role: the everyday machinery of recognition, and the set-piece moments that make the headlines.
The Court released no details of what was said in the audiences – and that is entirely the point. The presentation of credentials is not a negotiation. It is a promise: that the person standing in the palace, letters in hand, speaks for their head of state, and will be heard accordingly. In a world where so much diplomacy happens over screens, there is something reassuring about the envelopes, the uniforms and the handshake.
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