politician university professor
Miha Brejc was born to a Slovene family in Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia. His father was Tomo Brejc, an influential antifascist left-wing trade unionist who had emigrated from the Julian March to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the 1920s and fought as a partisan in the Yugoslav People"s Liberation War.
He studied at the University of Ljubljana, where he graduated in sociology in 1975.
In 2004, Brejc was elected to the European Parliament. The family moved back to Slovenia when Miha Brejc was still a child. He continued his studies at the same university, obtaining a master"s degree in 1983 and a Doctor of Philosophy in organisational sciences in 1985.
He worked at the University of Ljubljana since 1988, first as a senior lecturer and later as a professor
After the victory of the DEMOS coalition at the first democratic elections in 1990, Brejc was appointed Director of the Slovenian Security and Intelligence Service. In 1993, he was dismissed as director of the Security Agency by the then Prime Minister Janez Drnovšek, and returned to the academia.
During the same period, he also served as the Dean of the High School for Public Administration of the University of Ljubljana. During this time, he advanced several proposals for the reform and modernization of the public administration system in Slovenia.
In 1995 he was elected Vice-President of Social Democratic Party of Slovenia.
In 2000, he became the Minister of Labour, Family and Social Affairs in the short-lived centre-right government led by Andrej Bajuk. In 2000, he was elected to the Slovenian Parliament and from 2000 to 2004 he served as Vice-President of the National Assembly of Slovenia. He is also the chairman of the Slovenia-Taiwan Friendship Association.
He carried out the difficult task of democratization and pluralization of an institution that had served as one of the columns of political oppression during Communist times. In 1992, he joined the Social Democratic Partyof Slovenia. From 1994 to 1998 he was actively involved in local politics as the Chairman of the Municipal Council of Domžale.
His son-in-law, Gregor Virant, was the Minister for Public Administration in Janez Janša"s government and is currently leader of a central liberal politic party (the Gregor Virant"s civic list).
He is a member of the Slovenian Democratic Party. He was part of the European People"s Party parliamentary group and served as member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. He was also vice-chairman of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, a substitute for the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, member of the delegation for relations with South Africa, and a substitute for the delegation to the American College of Physicians-European Union Joint Parliamentary Assembly.
