JUDr Karel Kühnl

Karel Kühnl has been a Governor of the English College since 1997 and both his children are graduates of the ECP. He studied Law at Charles University in the 1970s, but was prevented from taking his finals for political reasons and emigrated to Austria, where he studied Economics at the University of Vienna. He finally graduated as a Doctor of Law in 1991. Karel worked as a freelance journalist in Vienna and later went to Munich to work as an economics and politics editor and analyst at Radio Free Europe. After 1989, he returned to Czechoslovakia and became economic adviser to the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic (then part of Czechoslovakia). He served as Chairman of the Board of Czech Television before becoming Czech Ambassador to the UK from 1993-97. From 1998 to 2006 he was a member of the Czech Parliament. He served as Minister of Industry and Trade (1997 to 1998) and as Minister of Defence (2004 to 2006). Later on  diplomatic appointments followed in Croatia and St Petersburg, Russia, before he returned to Prague in 2019 to take up the post of Ambassador at large. In 2022, he was appointed Chef de Cabinet to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.