Kati Piri

Career

Piri was born in on 8 April 1979 in Celldömölk, Hungary. She went to the Christian Gymnasium in Utrecht between 1991 and 1997. Piri studied the first years of pedagogy at the University of Groningen between 1998 and 2000 and then switched to international relations, graduating in 2007. During her studies, she briefly interned with Frans Timmermans’ parliamentary office in the House of Representatives.

Piri worked as a political advisor to the Labour Party delegation in the European Parliament between 2006 and 2008. In that latter year she became political advisor for foreign policy to the European Parliament group the Labour Party is in, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. She worked as an advisor to the delegation working on relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. In 2011 Piri worked some months at the Wiardi Beckman Stichting, a think thank linked to the Labour Party. Later that year she became programme manager for the Southern-Caucasus and Moldova at the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy.

Member of the European Parliament

Piri occupied the third place on the Labour Party list for the European Parliament elections of 2014, after Paul Tang and Agnes Jongerius. She cited upholding democratic standards and the respect for human rights as internal motivations to take up the candidacy. She was elected to the European Parliament in May 2014.

In the European Parliament, Piri is member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and member of the Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. She was part of the parliament's mission to observe Ukraine's 2014 parliamentary elections, led by Andrej Plenkovic.

In 2016, Piri drafted the Parliament's response to the European Commission's annual progress report on Turkey's EU membership.

In July 2016, after the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt and subsequent purges, Piri called for firm language by the EU towards Turkey. In August 2016 Piri stated that Europe demonstrated a lack of support after the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt. In November 2016, Turkish authorities refused to have a meeting with Piri in her capacity as Turkey rapporteur of the European Parliament.