The President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic Is the 66th “Face of Democracy”

Since 2015, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović has been President of the Republic of Croatia. Prior to that, the 50-year-old NATO Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy has so far been the highest ranking woman in the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Furthermore, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović is the first female president of independent Croatia. Sven Lilienström, founder of Faces of Democracy, spoke with Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović about Croatia's Presidency of the EU Council in 2020, the gender roles in Croatia and NATO as the backbone of Europe's security architecture.

Ms. President, you are our 66th "Face of Democracy". How significant are democracy and democratic values to you personally?

I remember how much I yearned for democracy, when I was a girl growing up in the communist Yugoslavia. How much I wanted to escape the oppression, lack of freedom and lack of individual choice. This is what motivated me to become an exchange student in the US. Upon return, it was even more difficult to tolerate the failed economic policies, the lack of values, of respect, of democratic institutions and inequality before the state and the law. Thus, I joined the moment for an independent Croatia that wanted to become part of the democratic family of nations.

For me the European Union's greatest achievements are peace, freedom, democracy, equality, human rights. It is easy to take the freedom it brought to all of us for granted. Or to forget the strong desire of the nations formerly behind the so-called Iron Curtain, behind that high wall that separated Europe, to be part of the free world. That desire guided and invigorated our fight for democracy and liberation. Croatia remembers it well.

As a country which has had its...