Alma Zadić

Austrian lawyer and politician
The basics

Quick Facts

IntroAustrian lawyer and politician
A.K.A.Dr. Alma Zadić, LL.M. Alma Zadic
A.K.A.Dr. Alma Zadić, LL.M. Alma Zadic
PlacesAustria Serbia Croatia Bosnia and Herzegovina
isPolitician Lawyer Environmentalist
Work fieldActivism Law Politics
Gender
Female
Religion:Islam
Birth24 May 1984, Tuzla, City of Tuzla, Tuzla Canton, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Age40 years
Star signGemini
ResidenceVienna, Austria
Politics:Now – Pilz List The Greens – The Green Alternative
Education
University of ViennaVienna, AustriaMagister Juris(2003—2007)
University of ViennaVienna, AustriaDoctor of Laws
Center for Study of Law and Culture, Columbia UniversityUSAMaster of Laws
Employers
Austrian Federal GovernmentAustria(2020—)
Freshfields Bruckhaus DeringerUnited Kingdom(2011—2017)
Positions Held
member of the National Council of Austria(9 November 2017—8 July 2019)
member of the National Council of Austria(23 October 2019—7 January 2020)
member of the National Council of Austria(9 July 2019—22 October 2019)
Federal Minister of Justice(7 January 2020—)
The details

Biography

Alma Zadić (German: [ˈalma 'zaditʃ]; born 24 May 1984) is a Bosnian-born Austrian lawyer and politician of the Green Party. She has been serving as Minister of Justice since 7 January 2020 in the governments of Chancellors Sebastian Kurz, Alexander Schallenberg and Karl Nehammer.

Early life, education, and early career

Born in Tuzla, Zadić fled to Austria with her parents in 1994 during the Bosnian War and the family settled in Vienna. She has been described as a Muslim, but denies any religious affiliation herself.

She studied law at the University of Vienna and at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Piacenza before getting a Fulbright scholarship for a postgraduate law degree at Columbia University in New York. While being a student, she worked as a junior legal researcher at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Vienna and as an intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. She was also a competitive volleyball player and fitness coach.

Before entering politics, Zadić worked for six years as a senior associate at the Vienna office of London-headquartered multinational law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, specialising in human rights issues.

Political career

In 2017 she joined the Pilz list, from 2018 the Jetzt list and was elected to the National Council in the 2017 parliamentary elections. In 2019 she briefly became a non-party member of the National Council before being elected as a member of the Green Party in that year's election.

On 7 January 2020, Zadić, along with three other Greens, was sworn in by Austria's president Alexander Van der Bellen to serve in the Sebastian Kurz coalition government as Minister of Justice pursuant to the coalition agreement of Kurz's ÖVP with the Greens, led by Werner Kogler, who serves as Vice Chancellor.

Zadić remained in the same role when Alexander Schallenberg set up a new government following Kurz's resignation in October 2021.

Defamation case

On social media, Zadić shared a photograph in which a member of a Burschenschaft was seen giving a Nazi salute, with the comment "No tolerance for neo-Nazis, fascists and racists". In November 2019, she was found guilty of defamation and fined 700 euros by a criminal court in Vienna.

The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article on 19 Jun 2024. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.