On 20 August 2024, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the nomination of the current Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Political Director, Andžejs Viļumsons, for the post of State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Following the Cabinet decision, the Minister for Foreign Affairs will appoint Andžejs Viļumsons as State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Andžejs Viļumsons has a long-lasting experience in the diplomatic and consular service of representing national interests in international institutions. Andžejs Viļumsons joined the Latvian Foreign Service in 1996. He worked in the Security Policy Division, to later become Head of the NATO Division. Having been posted as First Secretary to the Latvian Embassy in the United States, he was in charge of security matters at the time when Latvia began the process of accession to NATO. Subsequently Andžejs Viļumsons assumed the positions of Director of the Security Policy Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador, representative of Latvia to the Political and Security Committee at the Permanent Representation of Latvia to the European Union. Andžejs Viļumsons has also served as Director of the First Department of Bilateral Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as Director of the Defence Policy and Planning Department at the Ministry of Defence.
Andžejs Viļumsons is fluent in English, German, Russian, and French.
Current State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Andris Pelšs, who was approved for that position on 10 July 2018 and has made a substantial contribution to the development of the Foreign Service, has been appointed by the President of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs, as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and UNESCO.
Under Section 37, paragraphs 1 and 3 of the State Civil service Law, in order to ensure good administration, especially the efficient fulfilment of the tasks of the civil service and the public trust in the civil service, as well as to promote an increase in the qualifications of a civil servant, a civil servant may, without the announcement of open candidate competition and justifying the admissibility and usefulness of the transfer, be transferred to any other civil servant position for a definite or an indefinite term, in the same or another institution, while evaluating the civil servant’s point of view.