Mladen Grujić
Quick Facts
Biography
Mladen Grujić (Serbian Cyrillic: Младен Грујић; born September 22, 1966) is a politician and entrepreneur in Serbia. He has served in the National Assembly of Serbia since 2007, originally as a member of New Serbia and since January 2017 as an independent. He was previously a member of the Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro from 2004 to 2006.
Early life and private career
Grujić graduated from the Faculty of Organizational Sciences in Belgrade as an engineer in the field of labour organization. He left Serbia in 1990 and worked in the Netherlands, Milan, and Prague over the next decade; international sanctions. After returning to Serbia, he worked as a director of the cigarette distribution company Stampa Commerce.
Grujić opened a chain of pharmaceutical stores under the name Lilly in 2003. In 2009, he was operating ninety-one pharmaceutical stories, along with some other business ventures.
In a 2009 interview, Grujić said that his private business holdings did not create a conflict-of-interest situation for him as an elected representative, although he acknowledged that a conflict would exist if he ever held an executive position in the government of Serbia.
Political career
Grujić received the thirty-first position on the combined electoral list of New Serbia and the Serbian Renewal Movement in the 2003 parliamentary election. The alliance won twenty-two mandates, and Grujić was not selected as part of its parliamentary delegation. He was, however, chosen in February 2004 as one of eight representatives from the alliance to serve in the federal Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro. He held this position for two years; the assembly ceased to exist in 2006, when Montenegro declared independence.
New Serbia contested the 2007 parliamentary election in alliance with the Democratic Party of Serbia, and Grujić received the sixty-first position on their combined electoral list, which won forty-seven mandates. He was selected as one of New Serbia's parliamentary representatives following the election. (Prior to a 2011 reform, parliamentary mandates belonged to political parties and alliances rather than individuals, and each party or alliance that crossed the electoral threshold was allowed to select its parliamentary delegation from its candidate list after the election results were finalized.) Grujić was again included on the Democratic Party of Serbia–New Serbia list for the 2008 parliamentary election and was returned for a second term when the alliance won thirty mandates.
Serbia's electoral laws were reformed in 2011 to stipulate that parliamentary mandates would be distributed in numerical order to candidates appearing on lists that crossed the electoral threshold. New Serbia joined the Serbian Progressive Party's Let's Get Serbia Moving coalition for the 2012 parliamentary election, and Grujić was given the sixty-seventh position on its electoral list. The alliance won seventy-three mandates, and Grujić was declared elected to a third term. He was again included on the Progressive-led lists for the 2014 and 2016 elections and was returned both times when the Progressive coalition won landslide victories.
In January 2017, New Serbia leader Velimir Ilić publicly broke with Progressive Party leader Aleksandar Vučić's administration. Grujić opposed this decision, announced that he would continue to support Vučić, and left New Serbia. His departure took place shortly after Dubravka Filipovski's resignation from the party for the same reasons.
Grujić currently serves as a member of the Serbian parliament's European Integration Committee, a deputy member of the foreign affairs committee, a member of Serbia's delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and a member of the parliamentary friendship groups with Bulgaria and Iran.