Mogherini nominates Bulgaria’s Kuneva to EU post at Council of Europe
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has nominated Meglena Kuneva, a former European Commissioner from Bulgaria and a former Cabinet minister, to head the EU Delegation to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, the European External Action Service said.
Kuneva, who has a doctorate in law and is a former radio journalist, began her public career in June 2001 when she was elected a member of the National Assembly on the ticket of former monarch Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s party.
Two months later, Kuneva was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister and chief negotiator with the EU on Bulgaria’s EU accession.
In May 2002, she was appointed Minister of European Affairs in the Saxe-Coburg government, continuing in that post in the tripartite government formed in 2005.
When Bulgaria joined the EU in January 2007, Kuneva became the country’s first European Commissioner, in charge of consumer protection.
In the 2009 European Parliament elections, Kuneva was elected an MEP on the ticket of Saxe-Coburg’s party but declined to take up her seat.
Kuneva formed her own political party, the Bulgaria for Citizens Movement, which became part of the centre-right coalition the Reformist Bloc. Returning to Parliament in 2014, she became Deputy Prime Minister in charge of European Policies Co-ordination and later also Minister of Education. She did not stand as a candidate in Bulgaria’s March 2017 early parliamentary elections.
