What's the difference between embassies and consulates?

Question

Today Mitt Romney called Benghazi the capital of Libya (it's Tripoli) and apparently mixed up consulates and embassies. I thought it'd be a handy question to have on here, for those sorting out visas and the like when wondering about consulates and embassies.

So, the question - from a traveller's point of view, what's the difference between an embassy and a consulate, and what would you use each one for?

Answer 1

From the perspective of a traveler, there is almost zero difference.

Both embassies and consulates are representative departments of a foreign country/government within another country.

Technically, an Embassy is where an "Ambassador" is based. As there can only be one Ambassador for a specific country, there can only be (at most) one Embassy. As the Ambassador is the highest ranking representative of that foreign government, the Embassy is thus also deemed to be the highest level of representative location.

A consulate is similar, but generally deemed to be a lower ranking due to the lack of an Ambassador. Consulates will generally be smaller - often being more like an office where the embassy often doubles as the actual residence for the Ambassador and/or some of his staff.

Some countries may not have an embassy in a specific country, but may only have a consulate there. This will occur in the situation where there is no ambassador assigned to the country.

From a travel perspective, both will generally provide the same services, and normally location will be far more relevant than the name. In some cases consulates may be slower to process requests as they may simply pass them onto the Embassy rather than doing them themselves. eg, the Australia consulate in San Francisco does not issue new passports - they are forwarded to the embassy in Washington DC, however all passport requests from people in the San Francisco area must be done via the local consulate and can not be sent directly to the embassy!

Answer 2

Man, these answers are confused. Which is understandable, because this is complex, but quoting Wikipedia isn't going to do it. Here's my understanding, based on holding a diplomatic passport for 18 years and seeing all this first hand & up close.

So on a purely practical level, Doc's got it right: embassies and consulates are pretty much interchangeable from a traveller's view, as they both provide consular services like visas. All things being equal, it's usually better to deal with an embassy since they're usually larger and better resourced, and on occasion handle things that consulates don't.

On a legal level, let me try to straighten out the terminology a bit.

• An ambassador is a direct representative of a head of state to another country, which is why each country only has one.
• A consul is a representative of a government to another, and there can be many of these per country.
• An embassy is a permanent diplomatic mission (read: a delegation of diplomats) led by an ambassador. The term is often also used for the physical building they occupy, but that's more correctly termed a chancery.
• A consulate is a government delegation led by a consul. Likewise, the word is often used to describe the building itself.
• Consular services is the umbrella term for services provided to individuals: visas, passports, etc.
• A honorary consul is a local eminent person, often a citizen of the host country with business ties to the other, who has been granted (very) limited powers to provide consular services in a place that wouldn't otherwise have any.
• An honorary consulate is wherever said eminent person chooses to hang his or her fancy plaque on the wall.

In theory, the Vienna conventions try to divide the roles of diplomats and consuls, so that diplomats/embassies take care of state-to-state relations and consuls/consulates should handle the day-to-day grunt work of providing consular services. In practice, though, these roles are happily muddled; while consulates don't do state-to-state diplomacy, virtually all embassies handle consular services. Sometimes the embassy has a separate "consular division", which may even be in a different location, but it's still overseen by the ambassador and thus an integral part of the embassy.

Finally, having a full-fledged consulate without a corresponding embassy would be unusual in the extreme. What's more common is that an ambassador is accredited to multiple countries, and the "sub"-countries without an embassy have honorary consulates.

Answer 3

I disagree with Doc. There is a difference even from a travelers perspective.

The main difference can be described as follows: The embassy is a representative of its government in a foreign country. Whereas a consulate is a representative of its public administration. So as a traveler you should only be concerned with a consulate. The embassy typically acts as a communication channel between governments.

Both bodies could reside in the same building, but are usually distinct authorities with their respective responsibilities and hierarchies.

Embassies are typically only situated in the same city as the hosting government. A consulate could be located anywhere preferably at a location where many of its citizens are located.

There is also this notion of a honerary consul, where the consul is not a citizen of the country it represents.

Answer 4

Embassy represents country dealing with the host's government. There is always only one embassy per country, it's lead by an ambassador.

Consulate represents country dealing with individuals. There may be numerous consulates per country, there may be numerous consuls.

Confusion arises from the fact, that most often the building housing an embassy (diplomatic mission) also called embassy. And most often also houses the main consulate. From traveler point of view, you are interested only in consular services.

From Wikipedia:

The political title Consul is used for the official representatives of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the peoples of the two countries. A consul is distinguished from an ambassador, the latter being a representative from one head of state to another. There can be only one ambassador from one country to another, representing the first country's head of state to that of the second, and his or her duties revolve around diplomatic relations between the two countries; however, there may be several consuls, one in each of several main cities, providing assistance with bureaucratic issues to both the citizens of the consul's own country travelling or living abroad and to the citizens of the country the consul resides in who wish to travel to or trade with the consul's country.