Mladen Grujić

Mladen Grujić (Serbian Cyrillic: Младен Грујић; born 22 September 1966) is a politician and entrepreneur in Serbia. He has served in the National Assembly of Serbia since 2007, originally as a member of New Serbia and since January 2017 as an independent. He was previously a member of the Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro from 2004 to 2006.

Early life and private career

Grujić graduated from the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Organizational Sciences as an engineer in the field of labour organization.^[1][2] He left Serbia in 1990 and worked in the Netherlands, Milan, and Prague over the next decade.^[3] After returning to Serbia, he became a director of the cigarette distribution company Stampa Commerce.^[4]

Grujić opened a chain of pharmaceutical stores under the name Lilly in 2003. By 2009, he was operating ninety-one pharmaceutical stories along with a variety of other business ventures.^[5] He said in an interview published that year that his private business holdings did not create a conflict-of-interest situation for him as an elected representative, although he acknowledged that a conflict would exist if he ever held an executive position in the government of Serbia.^[6]

Political career

Grujić received the thirty-first position on the combined electoral list of New Serbia and the Serbian Renewal Movement in the 2003 parliamentary election.^[7] The alliance won twenty-two mandates; Grujić was selected for an assembly mandate and took his seat when parliament met on 27 January 2004.^[8] (From 2000 to 2011, Serbian parliamentary mandates were awarded to sponsoring parties or coalitions rather than to individual candidates, and it was common practice for mandates to be awarded out of numerical order.)^[9]

His first term in the National Assembly proved brief. By virtue of its performance in the 2003 election, the New Serbia–Serbian Renewal Movement alliance won the right to appoint eight delegates to the federal Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro. Grujić was selected as one of the alliance's delegates on 12 February 2004, and so resigned his seat in the National Assembly.^[10] He held the federal mandate for two years; the assembly ceased to exist in 2006, when Montenegro declared independence.

New Serbia contested the 2007 parliamentary election in an alliance with the Democratic Party of Serbia. Grujić received the sixty-first position on their combined electoral list, which won forty-seven mandates,^[11] and was chosen as one of his party's delegates to the assembly.^[12] He was again included on the Democratic Party of Serbia–New Serbia list for the 2008 parliamentary election and was selected for a second term when the alliance won thirty mandates.^[13] Grujić was a parliamentary supporter of Vojislav Koštunica's administration following the 2007 election and served in opposition to Mirko Cvetković's government from 2008 to 2012. He was a substitute member of Serbia's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from January 2011 to October 2012,^[14] in which context he caucused with the European People's Party (Christian Democrats).^[15]

Serbia's electoral system was reformed in 2011, such that parliamentary mandates were awarded in numerical order to candidates on successful lists. New Serbia joined the Serbian Progressive Party's Let's Get Serbia Moving coalition for the 2012 parliamentary election, and Grujić was given the sixty-seventh position on its list.^[16] The alliance won seventy-three mandates, and Grujić was accordingly elected to a third term. He was again included on the Progressive-led lists for the 2014 and 2016 elections and was returned both times when the Progressive coalition won landslide victories.^[17]

In January 2017, New Serbia leader Velimir Ilić publicly broke with Progressive Party leader Aleksandar Vučić's administration. Grujić opposed this decision, announced that he would continue to support Vučić, and left New Serbia. Dubravka Filipovski and Dragan Jovanović left the party during the same period for similar reasons.^[18] All three initially served as independents in the assembly (although Jovanović later created a new party called Better Serbia), and all three continue to support Vučić's administration.

Grujić currently serves as a member of the Serbian parliament's European Integration Committee, a deputy member of the foreign affairs committee, a member of Serbia's delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly, and a member of the parliamentary friendship groups with Bulgaria and Iran.^[19]

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