Speaker
Eduard
Kukan
Position
Institution
Eduard Kukan, Member of the European Parliament from Slovakia and member of the European Peoples Party, was first elected to the EP in 2009, and is currently serving his second term in office. Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Subcommittee on Security and Defence, he is the Chair of the EU-Serbia Delegation of the European Parliament. He is also a substitute member of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. In his previous mandate, MEP Kukan was heading the Parliament's Delegation for relations with Southeastern Europe for five years, while also sitting on the Subcommittee on Human Rights. Eduard Kukan was the Slovak Minister of Foreign Affairs for eight years from 1998 - 2006, during the time when Slovakia negotiated EU and NATO accession. Eduard Kukan also served as UN Special Envoy for the Balkans from 1999 to 2001.
A career diplomat most of his life, Eduard Kukan held various diplomatic posts for both Czechoslovakia and later Slovakia in sub-Saharan Africa and the United States. He was the first Ambassador of Slovakia to the United Nations. He has a degree in law from Charles University in Prague and a postgraduate degree from the Moscow State Institute of International Affairs (MGIMO).