Borut Pahor looks back on an impressive political career. He was Slovenian President and Prime Minister of his country and suceeded in nine elections in a row. Pahor is a democrat and a passionate European. A free and peaceful Europe and an ongoing political dialogue have been particularly close to his heart since the beginning of his political career some three decades ago. Borut Pahor (*1963) studied political science and graduated in 1987. At the age of 14 he became a member of the youth organisation of the SKS (Union of Communists of Slovenia) and since 1991 has been a member of the Party of Democratic Renewal, renamed the Social Democrats (SD) in 2005. Pahor became a member of the National Assembly in 1992 and served as its president from 2000 to 2004. In 2004, he was elected to the European Parliament as a Socialni demokrati candidate, where he is a member of the Party of European Socialists group. He was vice-chairman of the delegation to the EU-Croatia Joint Parliamentary Committee and a member of the Committee on Budgetary Control and the Committee on Constitutional Affairs. In 2008, his party won the Slovenian parliamentary elections with him as its top candidate, and Pahor resigned his seat in the European Parliament and was elected Prime Minister of Slovenia by the National Assembly in November 2008. In the early parliamentary elections in 2011, his party came in third and Pahor lost his post as prime minister. In the 2012 presidential election, he defeated the current incumbent in the second round and was elected for a further term in 2017, ending in December 2022. Pahor is one of the initiators of the Brdo-Brijuni Initiative, which focuses on EU enlargement plans in the Western Balkans. At the end of 2023, Borut Pahor founded the private institute "Friends of the Western Balkans" to promote the integration of the Western Balkan countries into the European Union. In April 2024, he announced his candidacy for the post of EU Special Representative for dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina and other regional issues in the Western Balkans. Borut Pahor is a lively and eloquent speaker who impresses with his passion for a united, peaceful Europe and who is very well connected in European politics.