About the Ambassador-designate

Sylvia Hartleif is the Ambassador-designate of the European Union to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. She previously served as Ambassador of the European Union to Benin from 2020 to 2024.

Before joining the European External Action Service, she worked for five years for the President of the European Commission, leading the foreign policy team of the Commission’s internal think-tank EPSC in Brussels. From 2005 to 2015, she served as Senior Advisor to the Foreign Affairs Committee and Secretary of the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-proliferation of the German Federal Parliament in Berlin. Earlier postings saw her as advisor in the European Constitutional Convention and seconded national expert at the European Commission‘s Directorate-General for External Political Relations. Before joining public service, she worked as a junior lawyer in Hamburg, Brussels and New York, including in the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, Division for Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea.

Ambassador Hartleif holds a Law Degree from the University of Passau, Germany, and an MPA from Harvard University, Boston, United States of America. She is a German national and speaks English, French and Spanish.

You can follow Ambassador Hartleif on X @SHartleif