Background
Kangler was born in Maribor, and attended elementary school in Duplek.
Kangler was born in Maribor, and attended elementary school in Duplek.
He has served as the mayor of Maribor, the second largest town in the country. On 6 December 2012, due to protests, he has stepped down from the position, and left the office on 31 December 2012. He continued his studies at the Secondary Police School in Tacen.
After that he obtained a first degree in law and is at the moment completing university studies in law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Maribor.
He was an employee of the Ministry of Interior of Slovenia. In 1995, he became Secretary of the Municipality of Duplek.
In 1996, he was elected as a Deputy to the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia for the first time. Currently he is serving his third term of office in that capacity.
He actively participated in several North Atlantic Treaty Organization Assemblies, including the ones in Paris, Copenhagen, Orlando, Ottawa, Warsaw, and Prague, as well as in North Atlantic Assemblies in Luxembourg, Ohrid, Bucharest, and Barcelona.
In 2002 he was elected Maribor City Councillor. He is Chairman of the Local Government Commission. He is also President of the Intermunicipal Football Association of Maribor.
Franc Kangler became the mayor of Maribor for the first time after winning the elections in December 2006, and again in October 2010 when he was re-elected.
Franc Kangler has been involved in several scandals during the mayoral career, mostly accusing him of corruption and clientelism. Currently, he is facing ten pre-trial or criminal charges due to different reasons.
In November 2012, The Commission for Prevention of Corruption of the Republic of Slovenia was investigating the case of the public company Farmadent and concluded that Kangler acted in a corrupt manner at the expense of public costs and public companies. Due to corruption allegations, pre-trial processes and criminal charges made against him, the citizens of Maribor, Slovenia demanded his resignation in two separated November"s and one December"s protest under the slogan Gotof je! (literally meaning He is done! in Styrian dialect).
He stepped down on 6 December 2012, with his mandate lasting until 31 December 2012.
At the same time, he applied for a seat in the National Council of Slovenia. On 12 December 2012, the office commission refused his candidacy. In December 2012, newspaper Dnevnik published article regarding Kangler"s degree from Business College Doba (Slovene: Visoka poslovna šola Doba), where he graduated in April 2008.
Dnevnik exposed that his thesis is plagiarized from articles, published in journal Lex localis.
On 30 January 2013 Senate of College revoked his degree due to plagiarism.
Franc Kangler has been a member of the national Commission for the Supervision of the Security and Intelligence Services for ten years. He has also been one of the three members of the Slovenian delegation to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Parliamentary Assembly for ten years. He is Chairman of the Traffic Committee and a member of the Committee on Domestic Policy of the National Assembly.
In addition to that, he is a member of the governing boards of two Maribor institutions: the Firefighting Division and the Slovene National Theatre in Maribor.