Pavol Paška
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| Pavol Paška | |
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| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office July 4, 2006 |
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| Preceded by | Béla Bugár (acting) |
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| Born | February 23, 1958 Košice, Czechoslovakia |
| Political party | Direction – Social Democracy |
Pavol Paška is a Slovak politician and the 20th and current Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic (4th since Slovakia gained independence in 1993).
Education and Professional Career
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 university studies he had worked for State Company Zdroj in Slovakia’s second largest city of Košice in which he was born on February 23, 1958. After finishing his study he worked at Education and Culture Centre in Košice and at Self-Administration Office and later Municipal District Administration KVP in Košice. Paška became active in the business sphere in 1992 before entering politics in 1999. He is married and has two sons.
Parliamentary Career
Paška 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 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 presidency on July 3, 2006. In that capacity he hosted and chaired annual 4-day summit meeting of all heads of European Union Parliaments – EU’s highest-level inter-parliamentary cooperation forum – that took place in Bratislava on 24 – 27 May 2007. In his inauguration speech before the Slovak Parliament he proclaimed cooperation, consensus and respect as the principles to guide his speakership.
Political Career
A co-founder (1999) and one of the vice-chairs since May 2003 of Smer – sociálna demokracia (Direction-Social Democracy) party, 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. In his political work he mainly focuses on European issues, foreign policy, international relations, health care, and social issues.
His party, Direction – Social Democracy, led by current Prime Minister Robert Fico, won the June 2006 parliamentary elections with 29.1% of the votes and formed a coalition with the People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (ĽS-HZDS) and the Slovak National Party (SNS). Support for Direction – Social Democracy party after the elections rose even higher, oscillating in the summer 2007 opinion polls around 40%.
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