Ivan Pilip

Ivan Pilip gained a degree in international business and trade at the University of Economics in Prague and did post-graduate studies at the Complutense University of Madrid. However following the end of Communism in 1989 Pilip became manager of a medical equipment factory and joined the Christian Democratic Party after it was founded in 1990. Pilip is married to Lucie Pilipova, who was a foreign ministry spokesperson, until she left the role when her husband became chairman of the KDS to avoid any conflict of interest. ==Political career==

The KDS fought the 1992 Czech election in alliance with the Civic Democrats and became a junior partner in a coalition led by the Civic Democrats. In August 1992 Pilip was appointed deputy education minister in the coalition government, before becoming Education Minister in 1994, replacing Petr Piťha who had brought him into the government. In the second half of 1997 pressure built on the prime minister Václav Klaus, over a donation to the Civic Democrats from a businessman who had recently gained a significant stake in a company privatised by the government. After the Foreign Minister, Josef Zieleniec, resigned in October 1997, Ivan Pilip called on Klaus to resign on 28 November and around the same time the 2 junior parties in the coalition quit the government. On 7 December a bomb exploded outside Pilip's house, causing no injuries, but alarming many. The rebel members of the Civic Democrats, including Pilip and 30 of the 69 deputies from the Civic Democratic Party, founded a new political party, the Freedom Union, under the leadership of the former interior minister Jan Ruml. However at the 1998 election Freedom Union only won 19 seats, compared to 63 for the Civic Democrats, with Ivan Pilip being one of the elected deputies. Following the election Freedom Union went into opposition, after the Czech Social Democratic Party formed a minority government, which was tolerated by the Civic Democrats. ==Arrest in Cuba==

On 12 January 2001 Ivan Pilip and Jan Bubenik, a former student leader, were arrested in Ciego de Ávila in Cuba. The Cubans said this was because they had met Cuban dissidents on a trip partly funded by the American organisation Freedom House and as a result the Cuban authorities charged them with subversion. They were taken to a jail in Havana and Cuba threatened to keep them in prison for a long time, potentially up to 20 years, as an example to others. Meanwhile, Ivan Pilip's wife, Lucie, came to Cuba and met her husband while he was being detained in Havana and called for international help to obtain his release. At the beginning of February the president of the Czech Senate, Petr Pithart came to Cuba and met the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, for six hours to try and obtain the release of Pilip and Bubenik. Pithart returned home on 4 February without Pilip and Bubenik, but he was later credited with paving the way for their release. On 5 February Pilip and Bubenik were released after a meeting at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, where they admitted breaking Cuban law unwittingly. The meeting was attended by members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, who said Pilip and Bubenik then left Cuba as tourists. ==Later career==

At the 2002 election Freedom Union fought the election in an alliance with the Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party, but the parties were reduced to 31 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 8 down on what the parties had won separately in 1998. Pilip was not elected as a deputy, but as first deputy chairman of Freedom Union, became acting leader of the party after the resignation of Hana Marvanova during post-election talks on the formation of a new government. Freedom Union became a junior party in a coalition led by the Social Democratic Party, while Pilip remained acting leader of the party until Petr Mares was elected as the new leader in January 2003. In June 2004 Pilip was appointed as one of eight vice-presidents of the European Investment Bank, the first from any of the states that joined the European Union in 2004. Pilip served a 3-year term as vice-president until the summer of 2007. ==References==