Ivo Vajgl (born 3 March 1943) is a

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...

n politician and former

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

(MEP) from

. In his second term in the European Parliament he was a member of

DeSUS The Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia ( sl, Demokratična stranka upokojencev Slovenije, also known by the acronym DeSUS) is a political party in Slovenia led by Ljubo Jasnič. The party claims broadly liberal values with a strong focus ...

and an individual member of the

European Democratic Party The European Democratic Party (EDP) ( French: Parti Démocrate Européen; PDE) also known as the European Democrats, is a centrist European political party in favour of European integration. François Bayrou is the President of the party. All ...

(EDP), while in the European Parliament he was a member of the ALDE Group. He has announced his candidacy in the

2022 Slovenian presidential election Presidential elections were held in Slovenia on 23 October 2022. Since no candidate received a majority of the vote, a run-off between the top two placing candidates, Slovenian Democratic Party candidate Anže Logar and independent candidate Na ...

Political career

Born in

Maribor Maribor ( , , , ; also known by other #Name, historical names) is the second-largest city in Slovenia and the largest city of the traditional region of Styria (Slovenia), Lower Styria. It is also the seat of the City Municipality of Maribor, th ...

, he attended the

University of Ljubljana The University of Ljubljana ( sl, Univerza v Ljubljani, , la, Universitas Labacensis), often referred to as UL, is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. It has approximately 39,000 enrolled students. History Beginnings Although certain ...

. He was appointed foreign minister by

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...

Anton Rop Anton Rop (born 27 December 1960) is a Slovenian politician. Currently, he is a vice-president of European Investment Bank. He was Prime Minister of Slovenia, from 2002 to 2004. Until 2005 he was also the president of the Liberal Democratic Part ...

on 6 July 2004, replacing

Dimitrij Rupel Dimitrij Rupel (born 7 April 1946) is a Slovenian politician. Early life and education Rupel was born in Ljubljana, in what was then the PR Slovenia, into a bourgeois family of former anti-fascist political emigrants from the Julian March (his ...

, who left the

Liberal Democracy of Slovenia Liberal Democracy of Slovenia ( sl, Liberalna demokracija Slovenije, LDS) is a social-liberal political party in Slovenia. Between 1992 and 2004 it was the largest (and ruling) party in the country. In the 2011 Slovenian parliamentary election, i ...

(LDS) party to join the opposition

Slovenian Democratic Party The Slovenian Democratic Party ( sl, Slovenska demokratska stranka, SDS), formerly the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia ( sl, Socialdemokratska stranka Slovenije, SDSS), is a conservative political party in Slovenia. It has been described as ...

. Vajgl's tenure ended on 3 December 2004 with Rupel's reappointment to the position in the new administration of

Janez Janša Ivan Janša (; born 17 September 1958), baptized and best known as Janez Janša (), is a Slovenian politician who served three times as a prime minister of Slovenia, a position he had held from 2004 to 2008, from 2012 to 2013, and from 2020 to 2 ...

, formed after the

2004 elections 4 (four) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 3 and preceding 5. It is the smallest semiprime and composite number, and is considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures. In mathematics Four is the smallest c ...

to the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...

, which were held on 3 October. As foreign minister, Vajgl joined Rop in signing the

Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE; commonly referred to as the European Constitution or as the Constitutional Treaty) was an unratified international treaty intended to create a consolidated constitution for the European U ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

on 29 October 2004. Between 2004 and 2007, Vajgl worked as the advisor for foreign policy in the cabinet of

President of Slovenia The president of Slovenia, officially the president of the Republic of Slovenia ( sl, Predsednik Republike Slovenije), is the head of state of the Republic of Slovenia. The position was established on 23 December 1991 when the National Assembly (S ...

Janez Drnovšek Janez Drnovšek (; 17 May 1950 – 23 February 2008) was a Slovenian liberal politician, President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia (1989–1990), Prime Minister of Slovenia (1992–2002, with a short break in 2000) and President of Slovenia (200 ...

. From the mid-1990s to 2007, Vajgl was a member of the LDS party. In 2007, Vajgl left the LDS party and joined the newly formed party ''

Zares Zares – Social Liberals ( sl, Zares – socialno-liberalni) was a social-liberal political party in Slovenia. Its first president was Gregor Golobič, former Secretary General of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia and former close advisor to the ...

''. In 2008, as a member of the Zares party, he was elected to the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia and became the Chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee. From 1992 to 1996, he was the Slovenian Ambassador to Sweden as well as all the Nordic and Baltic countries. From 1998 to 2002, he was Slovenian Ambassador to Austria and head of the Slovenian Mission to the OSCE in Vienna. His last post as Slovenian Ambassador took him again to the German Capital, this time Berlin, from 2002 to 2004. In the 2009 European Parliament elections, Ivo Vajgl headed the list of seven candidates for the party Zares. On 7 June 2009 he was elected a Member of the European Parliament with 9.77% of the vote and 21,031 preferential votes. In the 2014 European Parliament elections, Ivo Vajgl was elected on the list of the DeSUS party with 8.12% of the vote and 21,569 preferential votes. Vajgl is an art lover. He speaks English, German, Italian, and French.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vajgl, Ivo 1943 births Living people Politicians from Maribor Liberal Democracy of Slovenia politicians University of Ljubljana alumni Zares MEPs MEPs for Slovenia 2009–2014 Foreign ministers of Slovenia MEPs for Slovenia 2014–2019