Artis Pabriks

Artis Pabriks
Artis Pabriks
	Minister of Foreign Affairs
	In office; 21 July 2004 – 28 October 2007
Prime Minister	Indulis Emsis; Aigars Kalvītis;
Preceded by	Rihards Pīks
Succeeded by	Māris Riekstiņš
Personal details
Born	22 March 1966 (age 58); Jūrmala, Latvian SSR, Soviet Union
Political party	People's Party (1998–2007); Society for Political Change (2008–2011); Unity (2011–2018); For Latvia's Development (2019–present)
Other political; affiliations	Development/For! (2018–present)
Alma mater	Aarhus University; University of Latvia;
Website	www.artispabriks.lv

Artis Pabriks (born 22 March 1966) is a

Minister for Defence and Deputy Prime Minister of Latvia. From 2014 to 2018, he was a Member of the European Parliament

.

Early life and career

After completing his mandatory two-year stint in the

University of Aarhus

in 1996.

After finishing his Ph.D. on minorities in Europe,[3] he became the rector of the Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, a newly founded regional college located in Valmiera. He has co-authored one book: Latvia: Challenge of Change (2001), which was subsequently re-published together with volumes on Lithuania and Estonia under the title The Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (2002). Both were published by Routledge.

Political career

Pabriks was one of the founding members of the People's Party in 1998 and became a member of the Saeima in March 2004. He served as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission.

Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2004–2007

Pabriks was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs on 21 July 2004. He resigned from his position in October 2007 due to disagreements with the leadership of the People's Party, which he subsequently left.

Return to private life 2008-2010

In September 2008, Pabriks was one of founding members of the Society for Political Change. He was a visiting professor at Bosphorus University in Istanbul lecturing for the first semester of the 2009-2010 academic year.

Minister of Defence, 2010–2014

After the 2010 parliamentary election, Pabriks re-entered the government as the Minister of Defence.

In 2010 Pabriks challenged the incumbent general secretary of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Spencer Oliver for his position. Pabriks, supported by the Latvian delegation, called the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s rules "quite shocking from the perspective of an organization that's monitoring elections". It would have required a full consensus minus one to oust Oliver who has been in the position of general secretary since the organization’s inception in 1992. Pabriks was unsuccessful in his challenge.^[4]

In early 2014, Pabriks was

Unity’s first nominee to replace incumbent Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis; however, he was rejected by President Andris Bērziņš who argued that he lacked economic credentials. Instead, the position went to Laimdota Straujuma.^[5]

Member of the European Parliament, 2014–2018

Pabriks was elected to the

Committee on International Trade. In this capacity, he is the Parliament’s chief rapporteur on EU-Canada trade agreement CETA

. In addition to his committee assignments, he is a member of the Parliament’s delegations to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly and for relations with the countries of Central America.

In 2015, news media reported that Pabriks was included in a Russian blacklist of prominent people from the European Union who are not allowed to enter the country.^[6]^[7]

In 2016, Pabriks was the Parliament’s lead negotiator on a proposal to set up a new EU border force and coast guard.^[8]

Leader of Development/For! since 2018

In June 2018 Pabriks left the Unity party and joined the liberal movement Development/For!. He was nominated as the prime ministerial candidate of this electoral alliance and was elected member of the Saeima in the 2018 parliamentary election.