Urška Klakočar Zupančič

Urška Klakočar Zupančič (born 19 June 1977) is a Slovenian jurist and politician who has been the speaker of the National Assembly and the assembly as a member of Freedom Movement since 2022.

Urška Klakočar Zupančič was born in Trbovlje, Yugoslavia, on 19 June 1977. She attended Savo Kladnik Primary School in Sevnica from 1984 to 1992, and the Brežice Secondary School from 1992 to 1996. During her time in high school she lived in Glastonbury, England, and attended Millfield School from 1994 to 1995. She graduated from University of Ljubljana with a law degree after attending from 1996 to 2001, and passed the bar examination in 2005. She graduated with a master's degree in legal history in 2011, after writing about the division of inherited property in Babylon.^[1][2]

Zupančič interned at the headquarters of the United Nations in 2001. She worked in the office of the president of the Supreme Court of Slovenia as a judicial advisor after passing the bar exam.^[1]

Zupančič was a judicial trainee at the Ljubljana Higher Court from 2003 to 2004, and a senior judicial advisor at the Kranj District Court from 2005 to 2006.^[2] She has served as a judge in the District Court in Ljubljana since 2008.^[1]

In 2022, Zupančič joined Freedom Movement^[2] and became its vice president.^[3] In the 2022 election she was won a seat in the National Assembly.^[2] On 13 May 2022, she was elected to succeed Igor Zorčič as speaker of the assembly with the support of 55 members, becoming the first woman to hold the position.^[3]

Zupančič is the mother of two children.^[1] She can speak English, German, and Croatian, and knows some Italian. She published the novel Greta's Sin in April 2021.^[2]

During the COVID-19 pandemic Zupančič suggested that Slovenia follow the model used in Sweden.