From a federal entity to a state at the helm of the EU

LSE public lecture

Borut Pahor is Prime Minister of Slovenia, a position he has held since November 2008.

He began his political career in 1990 as a delegate in the then Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, where he also chaired the youth and international affairs committees. In 1992, he was elected as a deputy to the National Assembly. During his 1992–1996 term he served on the Assembly's Commission for EU Affairs, the Commission for the Supervision of Intelligence and Security Services and the Committee on Defence, and also led Slovenia's delegation at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In 1993, he became vice leader of the United List of Social Democrats (ZLSD). He was re-elected as a deputy in the National Assembly in 1996. Up until April 1997 he served as a Vice-President and was a member of the Committee on International Relations, the Constitutional Commission and the Committee on Defence, the Chairman of the Slovenian Delegation to the parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. At the 3rd ZDSL congress in March 1997 in Ljubljana, he was elected the new party leader. At the 2000 general election, he was elected as a deputy and became President of the National Assembly. In June 2001, he was re-elected leader of the ZLSD at the party's congress in Koper. In June 2004, before the end of his term in the Slovenian National Assembly, he was elected via a preference vote as an MEP at the European parliamentary elections. There, he was a member of the Socialist Group, the Committee on Budgetary Control and the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, and was the Vice-Chairman of the Delegation to the EU-Croatia Joint Parliamentary Committee. On his initiative the party was renamed the Social Democrats (SD) at the ZLSD's 5th congress in April 2005 held in Ljubljana.

The 2008 general elections brought a relative victory to the Social Democrats. Acting on the basis of the election result and having consulted parliamentary groups, the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Danilo Türk, appointed Borut Pahor Prime Minister, which was confirmed on 7 November by a ballot in the National Assembly. A new government was sworn in on 21 November 2008 and met for its opening session on 22 November 2008. The coalition government led by Borut Pahor comprises the Social Democrats, the Zares party, the Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia and the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia.

Mr Pahor has a Bachelor of Political Sciences, he majored in international relations from the then Faculty of Sociology, Political Sciences and Journalism. He graduated with honours in 1987, receiving the highest Slovenian academic awards (the Prešeren and Zore Awards) for students for his undergraduate thesis.

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