Michal Šimečka

Michal Šimečka (born May 10, 1984 in Bratislava) is a Slovak politician, journalist, researcher, and a Member of the European Parliament since 2019.[1] He is the vice president, and one of the founding members, of the liberal party Progressive Slovakia, having successfully led the party's candidate list in the 2019 elections, where they received the highest percentage of the national vote. [2] In february 2020 Šimečka was elected as vice president of the liberal fraction Renew Europe.[3]

As a journalist, he wrote for the Slovak newspaper SME from 2002 to 2004, and for Financial Times from 2004 to 2006.

Šimečka earned a bachelor's degree in political sciences and international relations from the Charles University in Prague in 2006. He then obtained an MPhil in Russian and East European Studies at St Antony's College at the University of Oxford in 2008, before moving to Nuffield College, where he received a DPhil in Politics and International Relations in 2012.[4] After his studies, Šimečka worked as a lecturer in Prague and Bratislava. He was an adviser on foreign policy in the European Parliament from 2011 to 2014. Šimečka also worked in the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels from 2013, before moving to the Institute of International Relations Prague as a researcher in 2015.

In November 2019, Šimečka was elected rapporteur on the establishment of an EU Mechanism on Democracy, the Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights. [5] In October 2020, he presented his proposal for a mechanism combining several tools which monitor the respect of rule of law and European values, which received majority support in the European Parliament. [6] Šimečka argued that the EU should do more to address the abuse of EU funding, writing that "an implicit bargain between net contributors and net recipients – we pay for market access, you are free to abuse funds" should end.[7]

He is the son of journalist Martin Milan Šimečka and a grandson of philosopher, writer and dissident Milan Šimečka. He lives in Bratislava with his partner Soňa and their daughter Táňa.