Miro Cerar, Slovenian lawyer and politician, 8th Prime Minister of Slovenia
Miroslav Cerar Jr. (Slovene pronunciation: [ˈmíːɾɔslaw ˈtsɛ̀ːɾaɾ], known as Miro Cerar [ˈmíːrɔ -];) is a Slovenian law professor and politician. He was Prime Minister of Slovenia, leading the 12th Government. He served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 13th Government. He is a full professor at the Chair of Theory and Sociology of Law at the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Law.
Cerar was born on 25 August 1963. After graduating in law, he was employed by the Ljubljana Faculty of Law. In the late 1980s, he actively participated in the efforts for the democratisation and state independence of Slovenia. In 1990 and 1991, he participated in drafting the Basic Constitutional Charter on the Sovereignty and Independence of the Republic of Slovenia and the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia. Between 1992 and 2014, he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Law of Ljubljana University, and an external adviser to the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia for constitutional and other legal matters. In 2008, as a Fulbright Fellow, he lectured on comparative constitutional law at the Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco and pursued post-doctoral studies at the University of California School of Law at Berkeley. Before entering politics in 2014, he was known as a jurist and intellectual specialising in the interpretation of constitutionality and the legality of the operation of state authorities. He advocated the rule of law, constitutional democracy, improved legal culture and higher ethical standards in the society. In the 2000–2018 period, in the annual polls conducted by the Ius Software portal (iusinfo.si), he ranked among ten most influential Slovenian lawyers 17 times, and in the 2011–2014 period, users of the Tax Fin-Lex portal voted him the most influential Slovenian legal expert four times.
In 2014, he entered politics, established the Miro Cerar Party (SMC) and was elected prime minister after his party won the parliamentary elections. After a number of crisis years, his coalition government (2014–2018) managed to stabilise the political situation and lead the country out of the financial-economic crisis. The government consolidated public finances, adopted a state asset management strategy and gradually abandoned the austerity measures. The government encouraged rapid economic recovery and stable economic growth, and started allocating more resources to all social areas. These and some other measures made it possible for Slovenia to correct excessive macroeconomic imbalances, which had persisted after 2011. In 2015 and 2016, in cooperation with local communities and NGOs, Cerar’s government managed to secure the humane and safe treatment and transit of approximately half a million migrants across the Slovenian territory.
In the 2018–2020 period, Cerar was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. By ensuring balanced foreign policy and good neighbourly relations, he intensified cooperation with the EU core countries, with pronounced relations with Benelux, and the United States. He advocated Slovenia’s greater opening up into the world. Among his priorities were economic diplomacy, sustainable development, rule of law, human rights, humanitarian action, and multilateralism. He was among the most ardent European promoters of the EU enlargement to the Western Balkans.