| Richard Sulík | |
|---|---|
| 5th Speaker of National Council of the Slovak Republic |
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| In office 8 July 2010 – 13 October 2011 |
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| Preceded by | Pavol Paška |
| Succeeded by | Pavol Hrušovský |
| Member of the National Council of the Slovak Republic | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 12 June 2010 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 12 January 1968 Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) |
| Political party | Freedom and Solidarity (2009–present) |
Richard Sulík (born 12 January 1968) is a Slovak economist, businessman and politician. He is the leader of the political party Freedom and Solidarity.
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Born 1968 in the then Czechoslovakia, Sulík emigrated in 1980 with his parents to then West Germany, where they lived in the city of Pforzheim. In 1987 he went to Munich to study physics and later economics at the Ludwig Maximilian University. When the borders were reopened right after the end of the cold war, Sulík returned in 1991 to Czechoslovakia. While still a student at the University of Economics in Bratislava, he founded and ran the company FaxCOPY.
When he graduated in 2003, Sulík was working as a special advisor of the Slovak Minister of Finance Ivan Miklos, whom he convinced to take his master thesis as a blueprint for the 2004 Slovak tax reform. This tax reform, introducing a 19% flat tax on all types of income and a 19% value added tax, was believed to be the single most important reform leading to the large increase of foreign investment in Slovakia and the economic boom period. After the reform was put through, he remained in the Advisory Board of the Ministry.
Between 2004 and 2006, Sulìk was CEO of a municipal waste disposal company OLO. He then returned as special advisor to the Ministry of Finance under Ján Počiatek in order to further evolve the tax system. In 2009, Sulík founded the neoliberal political party Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) which he leads as Chairman.[1] In 2010 he replaced Pavol Paška as the Speaker of Parliament.[2]
On 14 September 2011, Richard Sulik, the President of the Parliament and leader of his Party, which is member of the ALDE, the 3rd largest political party of the European Parliament, announced that he will not vote for an increase of the funds for the E.F.S.F. and that he finds as a better solution for the rest of the Eurozone member countries, to let Greece go bankrupt.
On 11 October 2011, his party did not vote for the European Financial Stability Facility enlargement even though Slovak Prime Minister Iveta Radičová tied the vote with a confidence vote for the government, thus toppling the Slovak government.
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