Úřad vlády nově přechází na doménu vlada.gov.cz. Více informací

Aktuálně

12. 1. 2022 10:18

Mgr. Jolana Mungengová, Ph.D.

Mgr. Jolana Mungengová, Ph.D.

Personal data

Mgr. Jolana Mungengová, Ph.D. was born on 1 January 1974 in Prague. Her mother is Czech and her father comes from the former African state of Zaire.

Education

Up to the age of seven, she lived with her mother and grandmother in Czechoslovakia, mostly in the village of Sloup v Čechách. She attended primary school in the nearby town of Nový Bor, district of Česká Lípa in Northen Bohemia. From the age of 7 until the age of 17, she lived with her parents in Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of Congo) where she completed the primary school École primaire Lisanga and the secondary school Lycée Prince de Liège in the French language.

After returning to the post-1989 Czechoslovakia, she passed the secondary school-leaving examination at the Grammar School Špitálská in Prague 9. Then she went on to study French linguistics and political science at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, and graduated in 1998 with the title Master of Arts (Mgr. [1]). As part of her studies at Charles University, she completed a scholarship course in political science at the French Université Lumière 2 in Lyon[2]. Later, she studied a year-long combined post-graduate course in political science at Université de Lausanne and Université de Genève in Switzerland and in 2000 received the title D.E.A.[3] In 2007, she successfully completed her studies of political sciences with the Ph.D. title obtained under a Fulbright Commission grant at Boston University[4] in the USA.   

Professional and public activity

After ending her studies at Charles University, she got her first employment in 1999, during the Presidency of Václav Havel, as a publicity officer at the Prague Castle Administration (PCA). There, she worked as a spokesperson, in public relations and in promotion of the cultural activities of the Castle.

After ending her studies of political sciences in Switzerland, she served for the subsequent year as a graduate teaching assistant to Prof. Ioannis Papadopoulos[5] at the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) at Université de Lausanne in Switzerland. She returned from Switzerland in 2001 and got employed at the Prague headquarters of the bank Komerční banka, a.s. as assistant to Michel Fenot, the Vice Chairman for distribution network management. She left the banking sector to resume her studies in the US and after returning from Boston, at the end of 2003 and start of 2004 she held the position of an assistant to a pre-accession advisor under the Czech-Irish Twinning Covenant CZ02/IB/SPP/02, helping at the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic with preparations of an operational programme under the EU Structural Funds. In that position, she welcomed the accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union. Shortly after, she started her European career with a working stay at the European Parliament in the translation unit in Luxemburg.

She benefited from her experience in the banking sector and in EU regional policy when she worked in the European Parliament in Brussels first in the period 2004-2007 as an advisor for regional policy in the Committee on Regional Development (REGI) alongside the Czech MEP Vladimír Železný Ph.D. in the political group Independence/Democracy Group (IND/DEM)[6]. She returned again to the European Parliament in the period 2009-2014 as an advisor in the Committee on International Trade (INTA), Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON), Special Committee on the Financial, Economic and Social Crisis (CRIS) and in the delegation for the Joint Parliamentary Assembly with Africa, Caribbean and Pacific States (ACP) of the political group European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). She was actively involved also in its Czech delegation, consisting of MEPs from the ODS political party, where she most often collaborated with Jan Zahradil[7] in INTA and Dr. Ivo Strejček[8] in ECON.

Directly following her work in the INTA committee, she served in the Cabinet of the EU Trade Commissioner Ms Cecilia Malmström[9], Ph.D., in the period 2014-2020. In the position of the Cabinet member, she dealt with issues of trading with dual-use goods and technologies, dialogue with civil society, transparency and access to documents on trade policy, relations with advisory bodies of the Commission, i.e. with the European Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee, relations with the Ombudsman and also national parliaments. The geographical agenda was formed by North Africa and EUROMED, East Asia, EU Member States associated in the Visegrad group and Lithuania. She also oversaw the portfolios of another five commissioners who addressed issues falling under the areas of regional policy, transport, employment and social dialogue, culture, youth, sport as well as science, research and innovation. She took part in the design, communication and evaluation of the EU trade and investment policy Trade for All[10] and in adoption of free trade zones with Canada or Japan. In the last three months of her employment in the European Commission she assisted the Director General for Trade (DG Trade) with preparation of an impact study on free trade zones with Mediterranean countries (EUROMED).

In 2021, she successfully passed a selection procedure for a management position in the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) based in Prague and she remains on its reserve list.

Since 17 December 2021, she has worked as an advisor for European affairs for the Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala[11] with a view to helping his government to successfully formulate and promote priorities of the Czech Republic in the European Union and in the Transatlantic Alliance.

In January 2022, she also took up the post of a political deputy to the Minister for European Affairs, Mikuláš Bek[12].

Engagement in politics

When working for the ECR group in the European Parliament, she was shortly a member of the ODS party in Prague 9. At present, she is not a member of any political party.


[1] https://upol.ff.cuni.cz/

[2] https://www.univ-lyon2.fr/

[3] https://www.unil.ch/iep/home.html

[4] https://www.bu.edu/polisci/

[5] https://www.unil.ch/iep/home/menuinst/membres.html?url_params=-v_faculte=40-v_unite=137-v_personne=3803-mode=fiche&pubsIdParam=578d3aca67674aab85aca2fc7ef4834f

[6] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/28357/VLADIMIR_ZELEZNY/history/6

[7] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/23712/JAN_ZAHRADIL/home

[8] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/28320/IVO_STREJCEK/history/7

[9] https://www.piie.com/experts/senior-research-staff/cecilia-malmstrom

[10] https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1381

[11] http://www.vlada.cz/cz/clenove-vlady/premier/zivotopis/petr-fiala-193001/

[12] http://www.vlada.cz/cz/clenove-vlady/mikulas-bek-191707/

vytisknout   e-mailem   Facebook   síť X

Fotogalerie [F] fotogalerie