Stier is one of the closest associates of Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and has served as a Member of European Parliament. Following the last Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) internal elections Stier was appointed the party’s political secretary. He is the descendant of political émigrés that moved to Argentina after World War II.
Davor Ivo Stier has been appointed the new Croatian foreign minister. Stier is one of the closest associates of HDZ party chief Andrej Plenković who recently won the mandate to serve as the country’s prime minister. Like Plenković, Stier too served as a Member of European Parliament (MEP) and both have resigned these seats to take up their new posts. At the last Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) internal party elections Plenković was elected president and appointed Stier the party’s political secretary.
Stier was born in Buenos Aires in 1972 where he lived in the city’s predominantly middle class Flores district. Stier’s family has roots in the Slavonija (Čepin). He is the descendant of political émigrés that moved to Argentina after World War II. Stier’s father was a physician and his mother Marija Lukač a university professor.
Stier first visited Croatia in 1990 as a participant of a Croatian Heritage Foundation programme and a second time three weeks before the fall of Vukovar as a reporter of the Argentinean newspaper El Cronista and of Radio America. He returned to Argentina in February of 1992 where he studied and graduated political science and international relations at the Catholic University of Buenos Aires, later also earning a degree in journalism. Stier again visited Croatia in 1996 at the invitation of the Croatian foreign ministry and worked at the Croatian embassies in Washington and Brussels. Up to 2009 he worked as a foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Ivo Sanader. He served as a Member of Croatian Parliament from 2011 and was elected to European Parliament on the HDZ slate in 2013. He won another MEP term in 2014 and served as a European deputy until his recent appointment to head the Croatian foreign ministry.
Stier has also secured the post of one of the deputy prime ministers.