Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Mr. Zsolt Németh
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs

Place and date of birth

Budapest, 1963.

Education

He graduated in 1987 at the Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences as an economist-sociologist. Between 1988-1989, he was a political sciences scholar at the St. Anthony's College in Oxford.

Employment

From 1987 until 1990 he was a founding member and a house master of the Széchenyi István Special College of the Karl Marx University of Sciences, while working as a scholar at the Research Institute of Hungarology. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1990. From 1990 until 1994, he was a member, later the Chairman of the Human Rights, Minority and Religious Affairs Committee. He served as a Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe between 1994-1998. He was the Political State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 1998-2002. After the change of government, he served as the deputy leader of the Hungarian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. During the 2002-2006 government term he was the deputy-leader of the FIDESZ parliamentary group and the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament. During the 2006-2010 term he was the Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs and Hungarians Abroad.

Public positions held

During his university years he was a leader of the Central-Europe Club, later the Social Sciences Club and a Member of the Board of the Council of Social Policy, Hungarian Culture and Geography Clubs. In 1990 he joined the Rákóczi Association and also served as a Member of the Board. Since 1995 he has been the Chairman of the Széchenyi István Special College Association, the Principal Trustee, later the Honorary Principal Trustee of the Transylvanian Congregation. He has been a Member of the Order of Saint John since 1999.

He was a founding member and a Member of the Board of FIDESZ. From 1993 onwards he was the Vice Chairman of FIDESZ for ten years, then the Vice Chairman of the Board. He has been the leader of the Foreign Affairs Cabinet of the party since 2002, and the Vice Chairman of the Political Commission of the Council of Europe since 2005.

Other

Languages spoken: German and English.