Kinga Gál (born 6 September 1970) is a Hungarian politician and

Member of the European Parliament A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been Election, elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and S ...

(MEP) from

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. She is a member of

Fidesz Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (; ) is a national-conservative political party in Hungary led by Viktor Orbán. It has increasingly identified as illiberal. Originally formed in 1988 under the name of Alliance of Young Democrats () as ...

Early life and education

Gál was born in

Cluj-Napoca Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...

, SR Romania and moved to

in 1986. She graduated from the Institute for Comparative Human Rights in

Strasbourg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...

with a diploma of International Human Rights in 1993 and from the Political Science and Law Department of

Eötvös Loránd University Eötvös Loránd University (, ELTE, also known as ''University of Budapest'') is a Hungarian public research university based in Budapest. Founded in 1635, ELTE is one of the largest and most prestigious public higher education institutions in ...

in 1994.

Career

From 1991 until 1994, Gál was an advisor to the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania. In 1995, she worked as an analyst for the Government Office for Hungarian Minorities Abroad and in 1996 as a researcher for the Teleki Foundation. From 1997 until 2000, she was an international legal expert at the

European Centre for Minority Issues The European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) is an academic research institute based in Flensburg, Germany, that conducts research into minority issues, ethnopolitics, and Minority group, minority-majority relations in Europe. ECMI is a non-parti ...

Flensburg Flensburg (; Danish language, Danish and ; ; ) is an independent city, independent town in the far north of the Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein. After Kiel and Lübeck, it is the third-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg's ...

. Between 2001 and 2002, she served as the vice-chairman of the Government Office for Hungarian Minorities Abroad. Gál was appointed chief advisor to the president of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

in 2003.

European Parliament

Gál has been a Member of the European Parliament since the 2004 European Parliament Election in Hungary. From 2015 until 2019 she was the vice-president of the

European People's Party The European People's Party (EPP) is a European political party with Christian democracy, Christian democratic, liberal conservatism, liberal-conservative, and conservative member parties. A transnational organisation, it is composed of other p ...

. In 2014, she received the annual MEP Award for Justice and Civil Liberties, awarded by Parliament Magazine.

Committees and delegations

Gál is currently a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Delegation for relations with the People's Republic of China. Additionally, she is the co-chair of the Intergroup on Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages.

Personal life

She is married and mother of four sons.Fidesz - Kinga Gál - "Mindig a család volt a legfontosabb az életemben, minden más csak másodlagos"
/ref>

Publications

* "Önrendelkezés és önkormányzatiság Kossuth felfogásában, 1861" (in Hungarian). '' Pro Minoritate''. Budapest. 1991. * "Kisebbségvédelem a nemzetközi jogban, Magyar Kisebbség" Protection of Minorities in International Law The Hungarian Minority"(in Hungarian). '' II évfolyam'', 1-2 szám, Kolozsvár. 1996. * "A Román Parlament elé terjesztett kisebbségi törvény-tervezetek összehasonlítása" (in Hungarian). '' Magyar Kisebbség'', III. évfolyam, 1-2 szám, pp. 244–255, Kolozsvár. 1997. * "Bilateral Agreements in Central and Eastern Europe: A New Inter-State Framework for Minority Protection?". ''

Working Paper # 4''. p. 22. Flensburg, Germany. May 1999. * "Implementing the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities". Co-author: María Amor Martín Estébanez. Flensburg, Germany, 12–14 June 1998. ''

Report #3''. p. 96. August 1999. * "The role of the bilateral treaties in the protection of national minorities in Central and Eastern Europe". ''

Helsinki Monitor ''Security and Human Rights'' is a magazine that was formerly known as the ''Helsinki Monitor''. It was established in 1990 and obtained its current name in 2008. The journal is published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers on behalf of the Netherlands ...

, Quarterly on Security and Cooperation in Europe''. Volume 10, No.3, pp. 73–90, 1999. * "Minoritätenprobleme in Ungarn und Rumänien". In Neuss, Beate, Peter Jurczek and Wolfram Hilz (eds.) ''Transformationsprozesse im suedlichen Mitteleuropa — Ungarn und Rumänien. Beiträge zu einem politik- und regional-wissenschaftlichen Symposium an der TU Chemnitz''. Occasional papers no. 20, Tuebingen: Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus- Forschung. pp. 31–41. 1999. * "Innere Selbstbestimmung — Aktuelle Autonomiekonzepte der Minderheiten in Rumanien". In Löwe, Tontsch und Troebst, Minderheiten, Regionalbewusstsein und Zentralismus in Ostmitteleuropa, Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar Wien. 2000. * "The New Slovak language law: Internal or External Politics?". Co-author: Farimah Daftary.

''Working Paper # 8''. pp. 71. Flensburg, Germany. September 2000. * "The Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and its Impact on Central and Eastern Europe". '' Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe''. Winter 2000. * "Legal and Political Aspects of Protecting Minorities in Southeastern Europe in the Context of European Enlargement". In Wim van Meurs, ''Beyond EU Enlargement''. Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, Gütersloh.2001. * "Aktuelle Autonomiekonzepte ungarischer Minderheiten in Ostmitteleuropa". In Adriányi, Glassl, Völkl, Borbándi, Brunner, Ungarn-Jahrbuch, ''Zeitschrift für die Kunde Ungarns und verwandte Gebiete''. München. 2002. * "Staatsangehörigkeit in Ungarn heute" Nationality in Hungary Today" In ''Osteuropa, Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsfragen des Ostens'' (in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

), 52.Jg., 6/2002. Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, Stuttgart. 2002. * ''Minority Governance at the Threshold of the 21st Century'' (ed.),

, Flensburg;

Open Society Institute Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is an American grantmaking network founded by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with the s ...

, Budapest. October 2002. * "The European Parliament Intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages, 2009–2014". '' Europäisches Journal für Minderheitenfragen'', EJM 3–4 (2010). Co-author: Davyth Hicks. * "National Minorities in Inter-State Relations: Commentary from Country Perspective". In ''National Minorities in Inter-State Relations'', edited by Francesco Palermo — Natalie Sabandze. Leiden, Boston. 2011. * "Az európai kulturális sokszínűség régi és új arcai". In Örökség a jövőnek — Nemzetközi Konferencia, Magyar Országgyűlés, November 2010, előadások, Budapest. 2011.
"Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages – the issues raised in the European Parliament Intergroup 2009-2011"
(

PDF format Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating system ...

). Co-authors: Davyth Hicks, Eplényi Kata. Published by Kinga Gál, Brussels. December 2011.

References

External links

*
gal.fidesz-eu.hu/en
her official MEP website {{DEFAULTSORT:Gal, Kinga 1970 births 20th-century Hungarian women politicians Eötvös Loránd University alumni Women MEPs for Hungary Fidesz MEPs MEPs for Hungary 2004–2009 MEPs for Hungary 2009–2014 MEPs for Hungary 2014–2019 MEPs for Hungary 2019–2024 MEPs for Hungary 2024–2029 Living people Politicians from Cluj-Napoca People from Flensburg