Karl Erjavec

Karl Erjavec (2006)

Karl Erjavec (2015)

Karl Viktor Erjavec (born June 21, 1960 in Aiseau , Belgium ) is a Slovenian politician.

Life

Erjavec returned to Kranj in 1972 with his parents, who were living as Yugoslav guest workers in Belgium . He studied law at the University of Ljubljana and then worked in the municipality of Kranj. In 1993 he became a member of the conservative party Slovenski krščanski democi (Slovenian Christian Democrats). From 1995 to 2000 he was ombudsman for human rights and from 2001 to 2004 State Secretary in the Slovenian Ministry of Justice.

In 2004 he briefly belonged to the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia , but in the same year he became a member of the Democratic Pensioners Party of Slovenia ; from 2005 to 2020 he was its chairman.

From 2004 to 2008 he was Minister of Defense, then Minister for Environment and Spatial Planning until 2010. From February 2012 he was Slovenia's Foreign Minister in the government of Janez Janša , he announced his resignation on February 22, 2013, as a few weeks after the Državljanska lista his party also withdrew from the government coalition because of Janša's corruption affair. In the next government of Alenka Bratušek, which was confirmed by parliament on March 20, 2013 , he was again Foreign Minister. After the resignation of Health Minister Tomaž Gantar in November 2013, Karl Erjavec also took over his department on a provisional basis.

In the early parliamentary elections in 2014 , the DeSUS, with Erjavec as the top candidate, won over 10% of the vote (10 MPs), the best result in party's history. In the cabinet formed after the elections, headed by Miro Cerar , Erjavec remained foreign minister and also took over the office of vice-prime minister. Erjavec was also the top candidate for DeSUS in the subsequent parliamentary elections in 2018 . The DeSUS now lost more than 5% of the votes and with 4.93% of the votes only barely made it into parliament (5 members). However, Erjavec missed his re-election as MP. After lengthy negotiations, Marjan Šarec managed to put together a new cabinet , to which Erjavec once again belonged as defense minister.

In the rotating election of the DeSUS party chairmanship on January 18, 2020, Erjavec lost to its challenger, Agriculture Minister Aleksandra Pivec , with 143 to 80 votes, so that Erjavec had to give up the party chairmanship after 15 years. Shortly afterwards the governing coalition broke up and Prime Minister Šarec resigned. Although DeSUS is also represented in the government formed on March 13, 2020 , Erjavec is no longer a member of Janez Janša's new cabinet .

Web links

• CV on the website of the Slovenian government (English)
• Article about Erjavec in Mladina from April 17, 2005 (Slovenian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Two other ministers from the government , orf.at, February 22, 2013