Friherre Nils Daniel Carl Bildt was born on 15 July 1949 and is a Swedish politician and diplomat who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1991 to 1994.
55 Facts About Carl Bildt
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Carl Bildt led the Moderate Party from 1986 to 1999, appearing at its lead candidate in four general elections, before his appointment as Minister for Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt from 2006 to 2014.
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Carl Bildt had been noted internationally as a mediator in the Yugoslav wars, serving as the European Union's Special Envoy to the Former Yugoslavia from June 1995, co-chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference in November 1995 and High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from December 1995 to June 1997, immediately after the Bosnian War.
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Since 2021, Carl Bildt has been the World Health Organization's Special Envoy for the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator.
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Carl Bildt was born on 15 July 1949 in Halmstad, Halland, to an old Danish-Norwegian-Swedish noble family, the Carl Bildt family, elevated to barons in Sweden, traditionally domiciled in Bohus county.
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Carl Bildt's father Daniel Carl Bildt was a major in the reserves of the now defunct Halland Regiment and a bureau director in the now defunct Civil Defense Board's Education Bureau.
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Carl Bildt was married to Kerstin Zetterberg from 1974 to 1975; to Mia Bohman from 1984 to 1997; and, since 1998, to Anna Maria Corazza.
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Carl Bildt has three children; two from his second marriage and one from his third marriage.
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Carl Bildt served as chairman of the FMSF Confederation of Swedish Conservative and Liberal Students, a centre-right student organisation, in the early 1970s, and chaired European Democrat Students, bringing together like-minded centre-right student organisations from across Europe.
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Carl Bildt became a Member of Parliament in 1979, although he served instead as State Secretary for Policy Coordination in the reformed non-socialist government after that election.
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Carl Bildt was a member of the Submarine Defence Commission investigating the 1982 incursions of foreign submarines in the Stockholm archipelago and naval base areas, and often found himself pitted against prime minister Olof Palme.
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Carl Bildt was elected leader of the Moderate Party in 1986, succeeding Ulf Adelsohn.
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On 4 October 1991, Carl Bildt became the first conservative prime minister in Sweden in 61 years, leading a four-party coalition government.
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Carl Bildt's government had to handle a large increase in refugee flows from primarily the war in Bosnia, defending a liberal approach against the anti-immigration New Democracy party that had entered parliament in 1991.
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Carl Bildt was an early champion of the Internet and information technologies.
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Carl Bildt led the first IT Commission in 1994, and in that year had the first exchange of emails between two heads of government with US President Bill Clinton.
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On 8 March 2008, Carl Bildt became the first foreign minister to officially visit Kosovo after it declared its independence.
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On 6 October 2006, Carl Bildt was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the newly formed cabinet of Fredrik Reinfeldt.
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Not only had Carl Bildt already served both as prime minister and as leader of the Moderate Party, but he and Reinfeldt had previously not got along.
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Carl Bildt retained this post following the 2010 general election.
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Carl Bildt lost his post after the 2014 general election, and moved on to become a board member of the International Crisis Group.
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Carl Bildt was as foreign minister in 2007 an active supporter for Turkey to join the EU.
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Carl Bildt called Istanbul a "true center of European history" and called Kemal Ataturk "undoubtedly the most significant European revolutionary of the last century" in 2004.
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In November 2014 Carl Bildt was criticised for having written an opinion piece in Dagens industri newspaper where Recep Tayyip Erdogan was described as being "on the right track" despite the persecution of Kurds and political opponents and jailed journalists in Turkey.
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Carl Bildt called South Ossetian independence "a joke", and said it would be supported only by a "miserable" lot of countries.
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Carl Bildt was a member of the board of the European Policy Centre in Brussels, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Affairs in New York.
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Carl Bildt served as non-executive director of the Baltimore-based US assets management company Legg Mason, Inc He served as chairman of the board of Teleopti and chairman of the public affairs consultancy Kreab AB, and board member of the IT consultancy HiQ AB.
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Carl Bildt was chairman of Nordic Venture Network, which brought Nordic high-tech VC firms together in an informal network.
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In 2002, Carl Bildt joined the board of directors of Vostok Nafta, a financial company primarily with holdings in Gazprom.
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Carl Bildt left his positions on all these boards upon becoming Foreign Minister in October 2006.
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Carl Bildt opposed any military intervention and criticized the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1993 for calling NATO to intervene against the Bosnian Serb forces, which led to the Sunday Times describing Carl Bildt and other EU leaders as "robotic political pygmies" and their acceptance of the ongoing genocide as "shameful".
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Carl Bildt has been questioned for his role as a member of the International Advisory Council of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group with ties to the Bush administration pushing for an invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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On 8 April 2008, during his visit in Israel and Palestinian Authority, Carl Bildt gave an interview to Swedish state radio, where he responded to a question on whether it would be possible to strike a peace deal without the involvement of the Palestinian group Hamas, which remained under international boycott.
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Carl Bildt responded that the Palestinian Fatah-backed government could deal with Israel, in the same way that it was possible for the Israeli government to make peace with Fatah over the objections of the former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, similarly to Hamas opposed a two-state deal.
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In 2012, Carl Bildt said he saw no problem with exporting Swedish weapons to Saudi Arabia.
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In 2015, Carl Bildt criticized Sweden's foreign minister Margot Wallstrom for damaging Saudi-Swedish relations.
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Johan Croneman at Dagens Nyheter has condemned Carl Bildt for pushing Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt to rephrase himself after having expressed understanding of the Russians' concerns about the situation.
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Norwegian politician Anniken Huitfeldt criticized Carl Bildt's statement, saying that it showed "ignorance of history" and that it "does not contribute to solving the conflict".
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Stefan Hedlund, professor at Uppsala University, stated that "Carl Bildt's threatening rhetoric should in this context be regarded as extremely destructive", in an article about the Ukrainian crisis.
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Hedlund suggested that Carl Bildt should take a "time-out", and that progress can only be made through dialogue with Russia.
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Carl Bildt continued his refusal to answer questions about Svoboda, saying that he "won't describe what that party is".
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In early 2015, a study made at the Swedish Defence Research Agency stated that Carl Bildt had been a target of information warfare and that he was "regularly smeared in Russian state-controlled media".
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In September 2015 Carl Bildt visited Kyiv, where he argued that the EU should provide more financial support to Ukraine.
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Carl Bildt was an early pioneer among politicians of using the Internet for communicating.
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Carl Bildt is an active blogger, starting his first blog in February 2005.
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On 30 May 2007, Carl Bildt officially opened a "Swedish embassy" in the virtual world Second Life.
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Carl Bildt maintains a personal Twitter feed in English with approximately 780,000 subscribed followers.
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In mid-May 2015 Carl Bildt was appointed to Ukraine's International Advisory Council on Reforms.
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On 14 May 2015, Carl Bildt was appointed as an advisor to Russian-controlled investment group LetterOne.
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Carl Bildt served as Chair of the Global Commission on Internet Governance that concluded its two-year work and produced its report in June 2016.
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Carl Bildt writes monthly columns for international syndication organization Project Syndicate.
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On 9 April 2021, the anniversary of the German occupation of Norway, Carl Bildt tweeted that the Swedish defence forces were stronger than Norway and Denmark.
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Carl Bildt's tweet provoked severe backlash, both from the public, and politicians, notably from Norwegian Minister of Culture Abid Raja, saying that he "had hoped our closest neighbour would be more sympathetic towards who this day is reflected by Norwegians and Norwegian Jews".
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Carl Bildt stated that his intention was to commemorate the events of the occupation, and that what he tweeted was historically correct.
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Carl Bildt added that people have read an assumption between the lines.