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Ambassador Karel Kovanda served as Deputy Director General of External Relations in the European Commission from April 2005 until the end of 2010. His areas of responsibility included the European common foreign and security policy; multilateral relations and human rights; relations with developed countries outside the EU, such as those of North America, East Asia, Australia et al. He simultaneously served as the European Commission’s Political Director, in bilateral as well as G8 contexts.
Prior to joining the European Commission, he was a senior diplomat in the Czech Foreign Service, from 1991 to 2005. He served as ambassador to NATO and to the UN, including leading his country’s delegation as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (1994-95).
He holds an undergraduate degree from the Prague School of Agriculture (1969), a PhD in political science from MIT (1975) and an MBA from Pepperdine U., California (1985). He is fluent in Czech, English, Slovak, Spanish and French, and has conversational Russian and German.