Juraj Krúpa

In 2001, he graduated from the Master's programme in International Relations and Diplomacy at the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations of the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. He worked at the Ministry of Defence, and from 2013 to 2016 he worked at the Permanent Delegation of Slovakia to NATO. From 2016 to 2019, he worked as the Director of the Security and Defence Programme at the Slovak Institute for Security Policy.[3]

He ran as a candidate for OĽaNO in the 2020 parliamentary elections.[1] However, he was not a member of the party.[4] In the Parliament, he was the chairman of the National Assembly Committee for Defence and Security, a member of the Special Control Committee of the National Assembly to control the activities of the Military Intelligence and a member of the Permanent Delegation of the National Assembly of the Slovak Republic to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.[1]

At the end of June 2022, he abstained from voting on the 1 billion euro package for families proposed by Finance Minister Igor Matovič (OĽaNO), thus failing to support the override of President Zuzana Čaputová's veto.[5] Krúpa was the only OĽaNO MP to abstain, which brought him to the attention of SaS chairman Richard Sulík.[6]

On 28 July 2022, Krúpa announced his resignation from the OĽaNO parliamentary club. A day later he announced his move to the SaS club. About his transition he said: "I ran as a candidate for the anti-corruption movement and found myself in an ultra-conservative movement that fights against liberalism".[6] "He described as a red line the consideration of admitting the possibility of forming a minority government with the support of "various criminals, extremists and fascists" during the coalition crisis".[7] The Republican Council of SaS approved Krúpa as a team leader for defence, but Krúpa has not yet joined the party.[6]