Čestmír Sajda was born in 1951 in Opava (Silesia). He studied at Charles University's Faculty of Law and the Prague
International Business School. This has been accompanied by a number of foreign stays. He worked as the chief sales coordinator
for exporting engineering goods to the Near and Middle East. Between 1984 and 1989 he worked in the Commercial Section of the
Czechoslovak Embassy in Turkey.
After 1989, he worked as the director of the Pragoinvest commercial group and then as a partner and the executive director of
the firm Group 21. From January 1997 to January 1999, he served as the general director of the Čedok Travel Agency. This was
followed by a stint as a project manager for PPF Prague and as the general director of Euronews, which publishes the weekly
newsmagazine EURO. After September 2000, he was employed at the Ministry for Regional Development as the Deputy Minister
responsible for European integration and tourism. He now works as a Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Labor and Social
Affairs responsible for European Union affairs and international relations. He is a member of many national and international
committees and commissions.
MIROSLAV SOMOL
Miroslav Somol was born in Kladno (central Bohemia) in 1952. He studied at the Faculty of Law of Charles University in
Prague, where he specialized in international public law and international organizational law. He then took a position with
the federal Ministry of International Trade. Beginning in 1979 he worked in the division of multilateral trade policy as it
related to the United Nations' system of international economic organization. From 1989 to 1991, he was the commercial attaché
in Syria. In early 1993 he was named a deputy minister in the Ministry of Trade and Industry for foreign trade policy and
domestic trade.
During the second half of the 1990s he served as the ambassador and permanent representative of the Czech Republic to the
United Nations and other international organizations based in Geneva. He served as the chair of the United Nations' Commission
for Human Rights and as the chair of the UN Economic Commission for Europe. After July 1, 2001, he served as deputy minister in
the Ministry of Industry and Trade responsible for trade policies and European integration. At the present time, since the Czech
Republic's accession to the European Union, he is the deputy minister for European affairs.
ZDENĚK NOVÁK
Zdeněk Novák was born in Jihlava (Vysočina) in 1985. He studied landscape architecture and gardening at the University of
Agriculture. Between 1983 and 1990 he was employed in the Decorative Gardening Research Institute in Průhonice, where he focused
on historical parks and gardens and their care.
Between 1990 and 1993, he worked as an official with the Brno Historic Preservation Office, focusing on the care of historic
parks and gardens and preserving the historical appearance of the countryside. He spent a further two years as the director of
this office. In 1995, he was named deputy minister in the Ministry of Culture responsible for cultural heritage. Since 1998,
he has served as the First Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Culture. He is an official expert in the fields of historic
preservation, protecting cultural heritage, and the histories of gardening and landscape architecture. He has published and
lectured extensively in these fields. He is also a member of numerous committees, commissions and boards of directors.
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