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On 14 April 2026, during a formal ceremony at Riga Castle, President Edgars Rinkēvičs presented a letter of credence to Ilze Rūse, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of the Republic of Latvia to the Federal Republic of Germany.
During her 30-year diplomatic career, Ilze Rūse has held various positions in the foreign service in Riga and abroad. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she worked on a wide range of European Union coordination issues, contributing to Latvia’s accession to the EU in 2004. She served as Director of the European Department and also headed the International Organizations and Human Rights Department. While abroad, she was posted to the Embassy of Latvia in Austria. From 2015 to 2019, she served as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Latvia to the Kingdom of the Netherlands and as the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Latvia to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (The Hague); from 2016 to 2019, she was non-resident Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, and from 2016 to 2020, non-resident Ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. From 2021 to 2025, she served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, representing Latvia’s interests in the Kingdom of Sweden.
Since 2025, she has been Ambassador-at-Large at the European Union Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ilze Rūse also has extensive academic experience: she is a professor at the Riga Graduate School of Law and has served as a visiting lecturer at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu, a visiting researcher at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University, and a lecturer at the University of Salzburg and the Latvian School of Public Administration.
She holds a PhD. in Political Science with a focus on European politics from the University of Salzburg, a Master’s degree in International Relations from Stockholm University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Latvia.
In the second half of this year, Ilze Rūse will succeed Alda Vanaga, who has served as Latvia’s Ambassador to Germany since 2022.