Borut Pahor – Keynote Speaker

Borut Pahor looks back on an impressive political career. He was Slovenian President and Prime Minister of his country. Pahor is a democrat and a passionate European. A free and peaceful Europe and an ongoing political dialogue have been particularly close to his heart since the beginning of his political career some three decades ago.

Borut Pahor (*1963) studied political science and graduated in 1987. At the age of 14 he became a member of the youth organisation of the Unity Party SKS (Union of Communists of Slovenia). In 1990 he was appointed to the Central Committee of the SKS and in 1991 he became a member of the Party of Democratic Renewal, which was renamed the Social Democrats (SD) in 2005. From 1992 Borut Pahor is a member of the State Assembly and from 2000 to 2004 its president. In 2004, he was elected to the European Parliament as a Socialni demokrati candidate, where he was a member of the parliamentary group of the Party of European Socialists. During his time as a Member of the European Parliament, Pahor is Vice-Chairman of the Delegation to the EU-Croatia Joint Parliamentary Committee and a member of the Committee on Budgetary Control and the Committee on Constitutional Affairs.

After his party won the Slovenian parliamentary elections in 2008 with him as the leading candidate, Pahor resigned from his mandate in the European Parliament. In November 2008, the National Assembly elected him Prime Minister of Slovenia. In the early parliamentary elections of 2011, Borut Pahor’s party became only the third strongest force and Pahor thus lost his office as prime minister. In the 2012 presidential election, he defeated the incumbent in the second round and was elected for another term in 2017, ending in December 2022.

During his time as president, Pahor became one of the initiators of the Brdo-Brijuni Initiative, whose main theme and focus is the enlargement of the European Union to the countries of the Western Balkans, and which became a model for other high-level initiatives.

Borut Pahor is a lively and eloquent speaker who impresses with his passion for a united, peaceful Europe and who is very well connected in European politics.