Artis Pabriks

Artis Pabriks
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Member of the European Parliament for Latvia
In office 1 July 2014 – present
Minister for Defence of Latvia
In office 3 November 2010 – 22 January 2014
Prime Minister	Valdis Dombrovskis
Preceded by	Imants Lieģis
Succeeded by	Raimonds Vējonis
Minister for Foreign Affairs of Latvia
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	(1966-03-22) 22 March 1966 Jūrmala, Latvian SSR
Nationality	Latvian
Political party	People's Party (1998–2007) Society for Political Change (2008–2011) Unity (2011–present)
Alma mater	Aarhus University University of Latvia
Website	www.artispabriks.lv

Artis Pabriks (born 22 March 1966) is a Latvian politician and a Member of the European Parliament.

In 1992 he obtained a degree in history from the University of Latvia and completed his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Aarhus in 1996. After finishing his Ph.D., 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.

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 was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs on July 21, 2004, and resigned from that position in October 2007 due to disagreements with the leadership of the People's Party, which he subsequently left. In September 2008, he was one of founding members of the Society for Political Change

He was a visiting professor at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul lecturing for the first semester of the 2009-2010 academic year.

After the 2010 parliamentary election, he 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.

He was elected to the European Parliament at the European election in 2014.

External links

• PABRIKS, Artis International Who's Who. accessed September 1, 2006.
• Pabriks A. Occupational representation and ethnic discrimination in Latvia — Rīga: Nordik, 2002. ISBN 9984-675-78-5