by Ulrike Lunacek
When: February 27, 2019, 12:30 - 2:00 pm
Where: Earl K. Long Library, Room 407, The University of New Orleans
Ulrike Lunacek was Vice President of the European Parliament (EP) from 2014 to 2017 and Member of the European Parliament for the Austrian Greens from 2009 to 2017. Her activities in the EP included being Rapporteur for Kosovo, Co-President of the LGBTI Intergroup, as well as being Member of the Committees on Foreign Affairs and on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, and between 2009 and 2014 Member of the Committee on Women’ Rights and Gender Equality. In 2017 she led the Austrian Greens into the October general elections. After a difficult campaign which did not bring the expected results, she resigned from all political functions and is now working as a free-lancer.
Lunacek was born in Krems, Lower Austria. She went to high school in Vienna and spent one school year as an exchange student in the USA with AFS. She studied English- Spanish-German for the interpreter's degree at the University of Innsbruck. In 1995 she ran for the first time for the Austrian Parliament, being the first Austrian politician open about her (lesbian) sexual orientation. Before entering the Austrian Parliament in 1999 (until 2009) she was Secretary General of the Austrian Green Party from 1996 to 1998. From 2006 to 2008 she was Co-Chairperson of the European Green Party.
