Karel Havlíček

Vice-Chairman, Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic (Czech Republic)

He graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University, as well as PIBS at Manchester Metropolitan University, and completed his doctoral studies at the Faculty of Business Administration of the University of Economics in Prague, where he also habilitated as an associate professor at the Faculty of Finance and Accounting. Since the turn of the millennium, he has defended the interests of entrepreneurs, especially in the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Crafts of the Czech Republic. As a co-owner and CEO of the SINDAT Group, he has built the company into a respected investor in small and medium-sized industry and new technologies over the past twenty years. For many years he has been involved in the academic environment, in recent years he has been associated with the University of Finance and Administration, where he built the Faculty of Economic Studies and where he prepared the study program Economics and Management. He has written several professional books on the topic of small and medium-sized enterprises and has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles in the Czech Republic and abroad. He has sat in a number of advisory bodies of the government and ministries, since 2014 he has been a member of the Government Council for Research, Development and Innovation and since 2018 he has been its deputy chairman. He is the main author of the government's innovation strategy Czech Republic: The Country For The Future. In April 2019, he was nominated by the Prime Minister for the position of Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy and at the same time for the post of Minister of Industry and Trade. He was appointed to both positions by the President of the Republic on 30 April 2019. On the same date, he gave up all statutory and ownership positions in the business sphere and also left the management of the Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Crafts of the Czech Republic. On 24 January 2020, Karel Havlíček also became Minister of Transport. He retired from both ministerial positions on 17 December 2022 and was elected Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic on 18 February 2022.