| Mátyás Eörsi | |
|---|---|
| Leader of the ALDE-PACE group in the Council of Europe | |
| In office 2001 - – 2009 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 24 November 1954 Budapest, Hungary |
| Political party | Alliance of Free Democrats (Hungary) |
| Alma mater | Eötvös Loránd University |
| Website | http://www.eorsiforcoe.info/ |
Mátyás Eörsi MP, (born in Budapest, 24 November 1954) is a Hungarian politician who was the leader of the liberal ALDE-PACE Group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). He became a member of the PACE in 1994. On 6 March 2009 the Hungarian government nominated Eörsi to Secretary General of the Council of Europe.[1]
Eörsi studied law in Budapest and was elected to parliament in 1990. He has been an MP ever since. In 1997 he was appointed Political State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a period of almost two years.
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Eörsi was born in Budapest. His grandmother, Ernőné Hajdu Fanni, Auer was a Social democrat member of parliament in 1945-1948. She was arrested and tortured by the Szálasi regime in the final months of the war. As a committed democrat, she was one of the 350,000 people purged by the Rákosi regime from 1946 onwards. She was jailed and tortured again. Oddly, the woman who tortured her was the same during both regimes. His father, Gyula Eörsi was a law professor, an author of several books and a major contributor to UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. His mother, Marianna Eörsi was a teacher of Hungarian literature and grammar at high schools. He is a nephew of the Hungarian author and former dissident István Eörsi.
Mátyás Eörsi was educated at the Kossuth Zsuzsa High School in Budapest. He was admitted to the Law Faculty of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, where he graduated in 1979.
Eörsi's started his career as in house legal counsel to a Hungarian state company in international trading. In 1987 he established his own law firm, Eörsi & Partners. His company, one of the first private law firms in Hungary, was among others specialized in commercial law and soon became one of the leading Budapest law firms. Although Matyás Eörsi is a full time politician now, he is still active as an arbitrator at the Arbitration Court attached to the Hungarian Chamber of Industry and Trade.
In 1988 Eörsi was among the founders of the liberal-democrat SZDSZ, one of the first Hungarian democratic parties. As such he was involved in the so called National Negotiations, the series of negotiations between the Communist Party and the emerging opposition on the rules and laws of the transition to a democratic system. A year later, as a member of the CEC (Central Election Commission), he was co-responsible for a historical referendum on crucial constitutional affairs. In 1989 Eörsi was elected to parliament, during the first free general elections Hungary ever had. In the first parliamentary term he was a member of the Constitutional Committee, where most laws for the constitutional changes were prepared and agreed on. At the same period, he was member of the EU-Integration Committee as well.
In 1994 Mátyás Eörsi became President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian Parliament and in 1997 he was appointed Political State Secretary (First Deputy Foreign Minister) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After Hungary's entry into the European Union (2004), Eörsi became the President of the Committee for European Affairs, a position he still holds.
His membership of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), as early as 1994, gave an extra dimension to the political career of Eörsi. The PACE has provided him the opportunity to work at his personal mission: assist in political transitions and the creation of democratic institutions in order to safeguard human rights and rule of law. Due to his commitment to democracy, Eörsi has undertaken numerous missions to support democratic developments in Europe and beyond, among others on behalf of the NDI (National Democratic Institute for International Affairs) in Washington, D.C. and the Freedom House During these missions, he shared the Hungarian transition experiences of the early 90’s with countries like Albania, Latvia, in all South Caucasus countries and later South Africa, Burundi, Indonesia, Mali and Montenegro. Furthermore he was involved in the Israeli/Palestinian peace process and in 2007 he visited even Cuba, to share the Hungarian experiences and strategies with the opposition. In the PACE Mátyás Eörsi guided the democratic reforms in Georgia as Rapporteur since 2000 and numerous times he has been chairperson of election observation missions. He submitted several reports for the Assembly, but he takes a special pride in three of them. The report about Cyprus[2] (2004) was supported by all stakeholders, unprecedented in the history of the Assembly.[3] His recent report on Attitude to memorials exposed to different historical interpretations [4] (2009), was also adopted with consensus and it was applauded both by Estonian and Russian members.[5] His report on the Balkans[6](2006) provided a comprehensive set of recommendations on European aid to citizens of the Balkan countries.
Late 2009/early 2010 Eörsi lead the PACE observers-mission during the 2010 Ukrainian presidential elections.[7]
His wife, Katalin is a biologist at the Chemical Research Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. They have three children: Márton (1981) is a lawyer, Júlia (1983) is a sociologist and Péter (1990) is a high school graduate.