{"id":5596,"date":"2026-04-24T08:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T08:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/5596\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T08:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T08:52:07","slug":"new-heads-of-mission-appointed-to-prague-and-the-hague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/5596\/","title":{"rendered":"New Heads of Mission appointed to Prague and the Hague"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"ingress\">At the presidential session on Friday 24 April, the President of the Republic appointed Jouni Laaksonen to serve as Head of Mission at Finland&#8217;s Embassy in Prague and Mikael Antell to serve as Head of Mission at Finland&#8217;s Embassy in the Hague, starting on 1 September 2026.<\/p>\n<p>                     <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/um.fi\/documents\/35732\/109239479\/Nimitysuutisia_en.png\/96fe6011-3255-1714-f060-d32caed934b3?t=1736942018668\"\/><br \/>\n                      Embassy of Finland in Prague, Czechia <\/p>\n<p>The President of the Republic appointed Counsellor for Foreign Affairs Jouni Laaksonen to serve as Head of Mission at Finland\u2019s Embassy in Prague, starting on 1 September 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>                     <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Mies puku p\u00e4\u00e4ll\u00e4 katsoo kameraan\" src=\"http:\/\/um.fi\/documents\/35732\/0\/Jouni_Laaksonen_240924_Sanna_Kaesmae-7.jpg\/1242e83f-edf3-9f59-3557-f220ed3bc472?t=1777017906021\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                       Jouni Laaksonen. Photo: MFA\/Sanna K\u00e4sm\u00e4<\/p>\n<p>Laaksonen will transfer to the post from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, where he has served as Head of the Task Force for the Finnish OSCE Chairpersonship at the Political Department since June 2023. Previously, Laaksonen has served as Deputy Permanent Representative and Ambassador at the Permanent Mission of Finland to the UN and as Deputy Head of Mission in Stockholm, Ankara and the Permanent Mission of Finland to the OSCE in Vienna.<\/p>\n<p>At the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Laaksonen has held positions at the Political Department, the Unit for Policy Planning and Research and the Department for Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Laaksonen holds a Master&#8217;s degree in Political Science. He joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1997.<\/p>\n<p> Embassy of Finland in The Hague, Netherlands <\/p>\n<p>The President of the Republic has appointed Counsellor for Foreign Affairs Mikael Antell to serve as Head of Mission at Finland\u2019s Embassy in the Hague, starting on 1 September 2026.<\/p>\n<p>                     <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Mies puku p\u00e4\u00e4ll\u00e4 katsoo kameraan, k\u00e4det rinnan p\u00e4\u00e4ll\u00e4 ristiss\u00e4\" src=\"http:\/\/um.fi\/documents\/35732\/0\/Mikael_Antell_240118_Sanna_Kaesmae-7+%281%29.jpg\/9a6d778e-6e72-9fdb-d763-a56cdb13406a?t=1777018042221\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                       Mikael Antell. Photo: MFA\/Sanna K\u00e4sm\u00e4<\/p>\n<p>Antell siirtyy Alankomaihin poliittisen osaston apulaisosastop\u00e4\u00e4llik\u00f6n teht\u00e4v\u00e4st\u00e4, jossa h\u00e4n on ty\u00f6skennellyt vuodesta 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Antell will transfer to the post from the Ministry\u2019s Political Department, where he has served as Deputy Director General since 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Antell has served as Finland&#8217;s Ambassador to Oslo. His career in the diplomatic service also includes posts in the Finnish Embassies in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Santiago de Chile.<\/p>\n<p>Antell has previously worked at the Department for Europe, the Secretariat for EU Affairs and the Unit for Asia and Oceania.<\/p>\n<p>Antell holds a Master&#8217;s degree in Political Science. He joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1998.<\/p>\n<p>                        Inquiries<\/p>\n<p>                          Niina Pesonen, Director of Human Resources, Human Resources Unit, tel. +358 295 350\u00a0082<br \/>\n                          The email addresses of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs are in the format <a href=\"https:\/\/valtioneuvosto.fi\/cdn-cgi\/l\/email-protection\" class=\"__cf_email__\" data-cfemail=\"e3858a9190978d828e86cd8f8290978d828e86a3848c95cd858a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">[email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the presidential session on Friday 24 April, the President of the Republic appointed Jouni Laaksonen to serve&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5178,5181,5180,42,5179,5177],"class_list":["post-5596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-hague","tag-alankomaat-p11821","tag-ministry-for-foreign-affairs","tag-press-release","tag-the-hague","tag-tsekki-p4054","tag-ulkoasiainhallinto-p12175"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}