The Consulate General (h) of the Republic of Seychelles in Rome has almost three decades of life. The late Consul General (h) Sen. Egidio Ariosto was the founder. The late former Consul (h) dott. Alfonso Zaccari has been its soul for several years. Paolo Adelmann has been Consul honorary first and Consul General honorary then, had been granted the honor to collaborate with both of them. This Consulate is the only one left in Italy which, we remind, counts almost 60.000.000 inhabitants. The Seychellois Citizens enrolled in our registry are 482.

GENERAL AND LEGAL AFFAIRS - We assist our Seychellois residents in Italy and the Italian Citizens, by processing an average of 120 dossiers a year. Half of them we guarantee free of cost. For the other half we request a small fee, to cover the expense needed. This difference is due to the nature of the services rendered. In example, the legalized translation of the documents for Italian Citizens to marry in Seychelles, it belongs to the second case. While helping a father to find his daughter who escaped in Seychelles with her boyfriend, we made it for free.

We are open to the public the entire week. Our telephone number is always reachable, also during the weekend.
Plenty of the procedures we cover are related to registry services. Furthermore we provide for overall assistance with all possible sectors of life (not only passports, weddings and registry certificates, but also assistance with regard to school/education, work and social security, health, relations with all possible public entities in Italy) whenever we are asked to.

Upon request, we also lend legal assistance. For certain peculiar issues (such as inheritances, which we all know are extremely delicate) we are therefore supported by our Legal Advisor. He leads his own law firm and supports us by helping the Seychellois Citizens. Rather than letting them go searching for private lawyers as they are often very expensive. In case a fee is required, it is 50% lower than the tariff of private lawyers.

In case of need we also create connections between Seychellois and Italian lawyers, as sometimes the situation involves the two different law systems (in example, the case of a car crash in Seychelles in which an Italian Citizen died).

INSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS AND CEREMONIAL DIPLOMATIC - The Consulate in Rome is furthermore honored to assist the Seychelles’ Delegations as they come to Italy. We remind some of the important Institutions present in Rome. The Italian Government, the Vatican, the FAO, the IFAD, the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, all Embassies in Italy and the main Consulates, just to summarize the main ones.
In case of minor events, when the presence of a Seychelles’ Officer is not strictly necessary and we are formally requested to (with obvious saving of time and money for the Government), we represent Seychelles by those Institutions, duly reporting to our Embassy which, we remind, is in Paris (France).
As an end, all the above information we synthetize in our quarterly reports, in reply to the request of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Joel Morgan, who asked all Seychelles’ Consulates worldwide to periodically summarize their activities. Which is what we do also after the end of Mr. Morgan’s mandate.

CONCLUSIONS - There is not the need to remind the work of a Consulate. We all know it can be sometimes hard. But we are proud to do it. As we love what we do since, most of all, we love Seychelles. This is not a secret for anybody. We love the people. We love the culture. We love the nature. We love every single moment of our stay in Seychelles. And every time we are back to our home lands, we long to get back to our beloved islands, which make us feeling at home too.
In conclusion, I would like to add that it is very easy for us to be promoters of Seychelles, its beauty, which is what we mainly do. I am also proud to remind that, notwithstanding the absence of a direct flight since 2012, Italy still is at the 4th rank in the world chart of tourists visiting Seychelles every year. Which is some point of the Seychelles’ GDP. This could of course not be possible without the tireless work of the STB office in Italy. But, let me tell you, the Consulate in Rome supplies its contribution as well, through an average of almost 1.000 requests per year, for information about visa, passport validity, general information. All these requests inevitably leading the conversation toward general tourism information, due to assist the Italian Citizens who like to know the most before their departure. PR is therefore part of our task, so not only in our relation with the public, the press, the tour operators but also in our everyday life. Being the Consuls a sort of “living advertising” of our beloved Country. Which is something we do with pleasure as, like I said, it is very easy to talk about something we love.