Richard SulÃk
Richard Sulík ( born January 12, 1968 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, now Slovakia) is a Slovak economist, businessman and politician. Since 2009 he has been Chairman of the Liberal party Sloboda a Solidarita (Freedom and Solidarity). From July 2010 to October 2011 he was chairman of the Slovak Parliament.
His family emigrated in 1980, twelve years after his birth, to Munich, Gelsenkirchen and finally Pforzheim. Sulík studied from 1987 to 1989 General Physics at the Technical University of Munich and from 1989 business administration at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich, but broke after the bachelor's degree in 1992, his studies. After the end of the Cold War, he returned in 1991 in Czechoslovakia back, founded the company FaxCOPY and was for the next ten years their leader. In 1998 he started at the University of Economics in Bratislava to study for a PhD in 2003.
After graduating, he worked as a consultant for the Slovak Ministry of Finance under the leadership of Prime Minister Ivan Miklos, the designed by Sulík 19 percent flat tax introduced in 2004. After that, he was from 2004 to 2006 Chairman of the Bratislava waste management operations and from July 2006 to April 2007 once a consultant for the Ministry of Finance, headed by Minister Ján Počiatek.
In early 2009 he founded the liberal party Sloboda a Solidarita ( SaS, freedom and solidarity ) and was also its chairman. In the parliamentary elections on June 12, 2010 SaS reached 12.42 % of the vote and, with 22 mandates, the third largest party in the National Council of the Slovak Republic. On 8 July 2010, he was elected President of Parliament. On October 11, 2011 Sulik and the members of his party did not vote for the increase in the euro bailout fund, which triggered a government crisis.
He speaks fluent English and German.