<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Hungary's new ambassador to Spain, Georg Habsburg-Lothringen, presented the Copies of his Letters of Credence to the Director General of Protocol, Adrián Martín Couce, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday, diplomatic sources told The Diplomat.</strong></h4> Letters of Credence are official documents signed by the head of state that accredit the ambassador as their country's diplomatic representative to the host country. The presentation of the Copies of Credentials to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs constitutes a preliminary and formal step before the formal presentation of the Letters of Credence to the King of Spain. The appointment of Georg Habsburg-Lothringen (also known as George of Habsburg-Lorraine) was approved by a majority vote in late May by the Hungarian Parliament (including the opposition) and confirmed on June 26 by the President of the Republic, Tamás Sulyok, at the proposal of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Péter Szijjártó. Following Spain's approval, his appointment was officially published in the Hungarian Official Gazette in early September. He will replace Katalin Tóth. Born in 1964 in Starnberg, in the German region of Upper Bavaria, George of Habsburg-Lorraine is the grandson of the last Hungarian king, Charles IV, the younger son of Otto von Habsburg-Lothringen—a previous pretender to the Austrian throne—and the brother of the current pretender, Charles von Habsburg-Lothringen. His godfather is Pope Paul VI. Despite being born in Germany, the new ambassador is an Austrian citizen by birth and has lived in Hungary since 1992, where he obtained Hungarian citizenship without losing his Austrian citizenship. Habsburg-Lothringen speaks German, Hungarian, French, Spanish, English, and Italian. He studied law, history, and political science in Austria, Germany, and Spain, and has worked in television and communications companies. His three children also studied at university in Spain, and the ambassador himself spent a good part of his summers in Spain, specifically at the family home in Benidorm. In Austria, he is known as Georg Habsburg-Lothringen (he has renounced the use of the "Von") and in Hungary as György Habsburg. He is frequently referred to as the "Archduke" in both the media and in public life, despite the fact that the use of Habsburg titles is not recognized in either country. Since 1996, he has participated in Hungary's negotiations with the EU as Ambassador Extraordinary to the European Parliament. In the 2009 European Parliament elections, he ran on the list of the conservative Magyar Demokrata Forum (MDF) party, but failed to win a seat. He subsequently served as President of the Hungarian Red Cross from 2004 to 2012 and, since 2020, has served as Hungary's Ambassador to France, which allowed him to overlap with the current Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, during his time as Spain's Ambassador to Paris.
