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Profile: Croatian new prime minister Andrej Plenkovic

Xinhua, October 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

Croatian parliament on Wednesday evening approved a new government after long debates and the leader of Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) Andrej Plenkovic was named the prime minister.

Andrej Plenkovic, 46, was born in Croatia capital Zagreb where he graduated from the Zagreb Faculty of Law in 1993 and also finished his post-graduate studies in international public and private law there.

He has a varied diplomatic career for more than 20 years. Starting as a staff of the Croatian Foreign Ministry in 1994 and soon was appointed as the head of then deputy foreign minister Ivan Simonovic's office in 2015.

In 1997, Plenkovic was named the head of the Department for European Integration and remained the post until 2001.

From 2002 to 2005 he was the deputy head of the Croatian Mission at the EU in Brussels and he became the deputy Ambassador to France during 2005 to 2010.

He shortly served as the State Secretary for European integration from April 2010 to December 2011 after returning to Zagreb.

Plenkovic joined the the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in 2011 and was a representative of HDZ in Croatian parliamentary committees on foreign affairs, European integration, justice, environmental protection, and inter-parliamentary cooperation.

In 2013 he was elected a member of the European Parliament on the slate of the HDZ and its partners.

He became the president of HDZ in July 2016 in intra-party elections as a sole candidate after former president of HDZ Tomislav Karamarko's resign following the coalition government between HDZ and its junior partner MOST party was voted non-confidence by parliament in June.

Plenkovic is fluent in English, French and Italian. He is married with one child. Endit