Anna Záborská

Anna Záborská
Member of the European Parliament for Slovakia
In office 1 July 2004 – 1 July 2019
Member of the National Council
Incumbent
Assumed office 21 March 2020
Chair of Christian Union
In office 8 February 2019 – 26 October 2024
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Milan Krajniak
Personal details
Born	(1948-06-07) 7 June 1948 Zürich, Switzerland
Citizenship	Slovakia
Political party	Christian Union (since 2019)
Other political affiliations	Christian Democratic Movement (1993-2019)
Alma mater	Comenius University
Website	Anna Zaborska MEP

Anna Záborská (born 7 June 1948) is a Slovak politician of the Christian Union party, living in Bojnice. From 2004 to 2019 she was a Member of the European Parliament, where she was a member of the Group of the European People's Party (EPP). She was a member of the Christian Democratic Movement party (KDH).

Personal life

Education

Born in Zürich. From 1966 to 1972 she studied medicine at the Comenius University (Univerzita Komenského) in Martin, Slovakia (Turčiansky Svätý Martin).

Family

On 10 July 1972, she married the architect Vladimír Záborský; together they have two children.

Medical doctor

From 1972 to 1998, she worked as a medical doctor in Žilina, Béjaïa (Algeria) and Prievidza.

Political career

Her political engagement was heavily influenced by her father, the medical doctor Anton Neuwirth (1921-2004), activist of Catholic Action, political prisoner, Member of Parliament, Presidential candidate, Honorary President of KDH and Ambassador.

In the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) she served from 1999 to 2000 as vice-president for international relations. From 1998 to 2004 she was a member of the Slovak National Parliament "National Council" (Národná rada), where she worked primarily in the EU-Slovakia Joint Parliamentary Committee, which prepared the Slovak EU membership in 2004.

In 2019, she and Branislav Škripek created the Kresťanská únia (Christian Union) party.

European Parliament

In 2003 she was nominated as an observer in the European Parliament (EP). In 2004 she was elected as Member of the European Parliament, where she was elected President of the EP Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality (2004-2009). During that legislature, she was a member of the EP Committee on Development (2004-2009) and the Delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (2004-2009).

In 2009 she was reelected to the EP. She stayed a member of the EP Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality (2009-2014) and member of the EP Committee on Development (2009-2014), and became an additional member of the EP Delegation for Relations with Canada (2009-2014) and of the EP Special Committee on Organised Crime, Corruption and Money Laundering (2012-2014). In 2014 she was reelected to the EP. She stayed member of the EP Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, member of the EP Committee on Development, member of the Delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly and became, in addition, a member of the EP Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.

Among others, she was the rapporteur of the following EP reports: Women and poverty in the European Union (A6-0273/2005, 22 Sep 2005), Gender mainstreaming in the work of the committees (A6-0478/2006, 22 Dec 2006), Non-discrimination based on gender and intergenerational solidarity (A6-0492/2008, 10 Dec 2008), Gender mainstreaming in the work of its committees and delegations (A6-0198/2009, 02 Apr 2009).

Together with MEP it: Tiziano Motti, she introduced in April 2010 an EP Written Declaration (P7_TA(2010)0247), which asked the EU Council of Ministers and the EU Commission to extend the Directive 2006/24/EC to make it possible to have an "early-warning system" on pedophilia. In June 2010 this text was adopted as the official text of the EP after having been signed by 371 of 732 MEPs.

She is opposed to abortion. On 24 January 2011, she spoke at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. On 22 September 2013, she was led one of the side events at the March for Life in Košice.

In September 2014 she nominated Louis Raphael I Sako (Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon) as a candidate for the 2014 EP Human Rights Sakharov Prize.

In 2024, she is the Vice-President of the International Pan-European Union. She is also head of the President of the Slovak Pan-European Union. In March 2024, she was preparing the KU for the European Parliament elections.

National Council of the Slovak Republic

Záborská is a member of the National Council of the Slovak Republic since the 2020 parliamentary election. She has been voted in with the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) party.

Political positions

In 2020, Záborská proposed an anti-abortion bill to the National Council of the Slovak Republic, however, it did not pass.

In 2021, she voted to pass a proposal to amend the constitution, which would tie one's legal sex to that assigned at birth, effectively prohibiting transgender people from changing their legal sex. The bill would also amend the constitution to say that "parents are a father - a man, and a mother - a woman."