Preceded by Zdenka Kramplova Role Member of Parliament Preceded by Jozef Moravcik | Spouse(s) Zdenka Kukanova Succeeded by Jan Kubis Name Eduard Kukan | |
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Born 26 December 1939 (age 84) Tornoc, Hungary (now Trnovec nad Vahom, Slovakia) ( 1939-12-26 ) Political party SDKU-DS(since 2000)Democratic Union (1995-2000) Books The Slovak Republic on Its Way Into the European Union Profiles | ||
Eduard kukan mep on multilingualism
Eduard Kukan (born 26 December 1939) served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia from 1998 to 2006. He was a candidate in the presidential election held on 3 April 2004, and although pre-election polls had suggested he would come in first, he actually came in third behind former prime minister Vladimír Mečiar and Ivan Gašparovič, thus preventing him from contesting the run-off. He was elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 2009.
Contents
- Eduard kukan mep on multilingualism
- Eduard Kukan MEP interview on the Velvet Divorce
- Early life and education
- Diplomatic career
- Member of the European Parliament 2009present
- Other activities
- Personal life
- References
In 1999, Kukan was appointed United Nations Special Envoy on Kosovo by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a role he held alongside Carl Bildt.
Eduard Kukan MEP interview on the Velvet Divorce
Early life and education
Kukan graduated from The Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1964, where he has also gained an excellent command of the Swahili language. After graduation he received a Doctorate in Law from the Faculty of Law of the Charles University in Prague.
Diplomatic career
Since then his employments have included:
Member of the European Parliament, 2009–present
Kukan has been a Member of the European Parliament since the 2009 European elections. In the election campaign, he led the list of candidates of the centre-right Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ).
Kukan has since been serving on the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In addition, he was a member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights between 2009 and 2014. In 2014, he moved to the Subcommittee on Security and Defence.
In 2010, Kukan joined the Friends of the EEAS, a unofficial and independent pressure group formed because of concerns that the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton was not paying sufficient attention to the Parliament and was sharing too little information on the formation of the European External Action Service.
Kukan led the parliament’s monitoring mission during the Ugandan general elections in 2016.
Other activities
Personal life
Kukan is married and has two adult children. In addition to his native tongue and Swahili, he speaks English, Russian, and Spanish. In 1993, he was awarded an honorary law degree by the Upsala College in New Jersey, U.S..