Artis Pabriks

Who is Artis Pabriks?

Artis Pabriks is a Latvian politician, the former Minister of Defence of Latvia.

Artis Pabriks has a degree in history from the University of Latvia and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Aarhus, Denmark. After finishing his Ph.D., he became the rector of Vidzemes augstskola, a newly founded regional college located in Valmiera, Latvia. He has taught at Vidzemes Augstskola since then. He has co-authored one book: Latvia: Challenge of Change, which was subsequently re-published together with volumes on Lithuania and Estonia under the title The Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Both were published by Routledge.

Pabriks joined politics as one of founding members of Tautas Partija in 1998 and became a member of Saeima, the Latvian parliament in March 2004. He was appointed the Foreign Minister on July 21, 2004, and he resigned from that position in October 2007 due to disagreements with the leaders of Tautas Partija which he then left in November.

Artis Pabriks was one of founding members of the Society for Other Politics in September 2008.

In 2010 Pabriks challenged the incumbent general secretary of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Spencer Oliver for his position. Pabriks, supported by the Latvian delegation, called the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s rules "quite shocking from the perspective of an organization that's monitoring elections". It would have required a full consensus minus one to oust R. Spencer Oliver who has been in the position of general secretary since the organization’s inception. Pabriks was unsuccessful in his challenge.