Mr. Pavol Paška is the 20th Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic (since 1848, 4th since Slovakia gained independence in 1993). He was sworn into office on 4 July 2006 after 98 Members of Parliament out of the 148 present in a 150-seat single-chamber Slovak parliament supported his nomination in a secret ballot that took place on the same day. He was elected a Member of Parliament in 2002 and re-elected again in the June 2006 general elections. Right after being chosen to lead the Slovak Parliament Mr. Paška became also temporary Chair of the Conference of the Speakers of European Union Parliaments after The National Council of the Slovak Republic took over the Conference’s rotating presidency on July 3, 2006.

A co-founder and Vice-Chair since May 2003 of Smer – sociálna demokracia (Smer-Social Democracy) party, Mr. Paška served on three parliamentary Committees during the 2002-2006 3rd term of office of the National Council of the Slovak Republic. After having sat on the Parliament’s Health Care Committee and on the Special Oversight Committee for the SIS he was elected Chair of the Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, a post he held from 24 August 2004 until the June 2006 parliamentary elections.

Mr. Paška graduated from the Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University in Bratislava in 1985. His study fields included philosophy and aesthetics. Prior to his five-year university studies he had worked for State Company Zdroj in Slovakia’s second largest city of Košice in which he was born February 23, 1958. After concluding his study he worked at Education and Culture Centre in Košice and at the Self-administration Office and later Municipal District Administration KVP in Košice. In 1992 Mr. Paška became active in the business sphere. He is married and has two sons.

(National Council of the Slovak Republic, http://www.nrsr.sk)

Photo: Pavol Paska at the press conference, Jun 15, 2007. (TASR - Martin Baumann)