On Tuesday 18 July 2006 Ivo Sanader, Prime Minister of Croatia, gave an Address on "Croatia - 28th EU Member State".
Ivo Sanader was appointed prime minister after his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) won the country's general election in late November 2003. He has listed EU and NATO integration among his key priorities.
Mr Sanader was born on June 8, 1953 in Split, Croatia. He attended the University of Innsbruck in Austria, where he studied Comparative Literature and Romance Languages.
In August of 1992, after being elected to the House of Representatives of the Croatian Parliament, Sanader became Minister of Science and Technology, a position he held until January 1993 when he was subsequently appointed deputy foreign minister. In this new post, he participated in the bilateral talks which led to the establishment of the Croat-Muslim Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH). During this period, Sanader joined his party's Central Committee.
At the end of November 1995, following the Dayton Peace Accords, Sanader left the cabinet to become Chief of Staff to then Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, who also appointed him Secretary General of the Defense and National Security Council and a member of the Presidential Council.
In 1998, he was elected president of HDZ. He emphasised that the HDZ has broken with its authoritarian past and become a mainstream conservative party, strongly pursuing pro-EU policies.
