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, Jose E. Stilianapolous, 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. 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. In 2019, 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.
Staff and activities
The Philippine Embassy in Stockholm is provisionally headed by a chargé d'affaires, pending the appointment of a new ambassador by the Philippine government. The current chargé d'affaires is Raul H. Dado, who had previously served as consul general at the Philippine Embassy in Kuwait City. The last resident ambassador was Maria Zeneida Collinson, appointed in 2007 by President Arroyo. The Embassy currently serves 15,000 Filipinos in Sweden and over 4,000 Filipinos in Finland. While it now handles most consular transactions, passport renewals are still provisionally handled by the Philippine Embassy in Oslo, ostensibly due to delays in receiving passport issuing equipment due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
