JOSEF ZIELENIEC,
THE FOREIGN MINISTER OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC
was appointed Foreign Minister on July 5,
1992 by the Czech National Council, i.e., the Czech parliament,
after the June elections. He was given a mandate to create the
Czech Foreign Ministry, and on January 1, 1993 was appointed the
Czech Foreign Minister.
Josef Zieleniec is a co-founder of the Civic Democratic
Party (ODS) and a member of its Executive Committee. He was
elected its Deputy Chairman in November 1991 and reelected in
November 1992.
Josef Zieleniec is one of the main authors of the ODS party
platform, especially of the economic and foreign policy chapters
of the programme.
Until 1990, he was not a member of any political party,
having spent most of his life as an academic.
Born in 1946, Josef Zieleniec graduated from the School of
Nuclear Technology in Prague in 1966, and from the Prague School
of Economics specializing in industrial economics, in 1974.
In 1973, he began to work at the Research Institute of
Machinery Technology and Economics, where he specialized in
mathematical methods in economics.
In 1986, he defended his thesis in microeconomics and began
work at the Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy
of Sciences. There he initiated a seminar which greatly
influenced the opinion of Czechoslovak economists on the
transformation proless a centrally planned to a free market
economy. Within the framework of this seminar, he prepared the
study "Czechoslovakia at the Crossroads," which influenced the
post-November discussions on economic reform.
In January 1990, Josef Zieleniec founded and became director
of the Centre for economic Research and Graduate Educations
(CERGE) at Charles University, the first Western-style Ph D-
level economics institution in Czechoslovakia, which he headed
until he became Minister. In 1991, he was appointed to the
Scientific Council of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles
University and became an associate professor of economics.
Josef Zieleniec is married.
Speeches released by the Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the Czech Republic.
Membership of the Czech Republic in the UN Security Council (18th July, 1994)
Speech by the Minister of the Foreign Affairs J.Zieleniec in the polish Sejm (8th September, 1994)
Statement of His Excellency J.Zieleniec, at the 49th General Assembly of the United Nations (3th October, 1994, New York)
Speech by the Minister of the Foreign Affairs J.Zieleniec at Institut Francais des Realtions Internationales (6th October, 1994, Paris)