Ambassador Lubomir Kopaj

Ambassador Lubomir Kopaj of Slovakia took up his post as OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine in April 2008.

Born in 1955 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, he was educated at the Institute of International Relations, Moscow (1974-79) and later continued his postgraduate diplomatic studies in the UK at the University of Birmingham's School of International Studies and Social Sciences (1995-96).

Ambassador Kopaj has extensive diplomatic experience, having held a number of senior posts with the Slovakian (and earlier the Czechoslovakian) Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including Ambassador of Slovakia to The Netherlands (1997-2000), Director General of the Administrative Section (2002-03) and most recently Ambassador in the Ministry's Analysis and Foreign Policy Planning Department (2003-08).

He has headed or been a member of a number of OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) election observation missions in Georgia, Uzbekistan, Belgium, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia from 2003-07. He was also a member of his country's delegation to the 1992 CSCE Summit in Helsinki.

Ambassador Kopaj speaks English, Russian, Polish, Swedish and German. He is married to Daniela, and they have two children, Zuzana and Katarina.