Mátyás Eörsi (born 24 November 1954) is a Hungarian politician who was the leader of the liberal Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (ALDE-PACE) Group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). He became a member of the PACE in 1994. On 6 March 2009 the Hungarian government nominated Eörsi to Secretary General of the Council of Europe. Eörsi studied law in Budapest and was elected to parliament in 1990. He was an MP until 2010. In 1997 he was appointed Political State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a period of almost two years. In parliament, he served as Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairperson of the European Affairs Committee, and he was leader of the Parliamentary Group of the party, SZDSZ as well. Personal background and professional life Eörsi was born in Budapest. His grandmother, Ernőné Hajdu Fanni, Auer was a Social democrat member of parliament in 1945-1948. She was arrested and tortured by the Ferenc Szálasi regime in the final months of the war. As a committed democrat, she was one of the 350,000 people purged by the Rákosi regime from 1946 onwards. She was jailed and tortured again. Oddly, the woman who tortured her was the same during both regimes. His father, Gyula Eörsi was a law professor, an author of several books and a major contributor to UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. His mother, Marianna Eörsi was a teacher of Hungarian literature and grammar at high schools. He is a nephew of the Hungarian author and former dissident István Eörsi. Education Mátyás Eörsi was educated at the Kossuth Zsuzsa High School in Budapest. He was admitted to the Law Faculty of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, where he graduated in 1979. Employment Eörsi's started his career as in house legal counsel to a Hungarian state company "KOMPLEX Export-Import" in international trading. In 1987 he established his own law firm, Eörsi & Partners which he ran as managing partner until he became an MP. The firm, one of the first private law firms in Hungary, was among others specialized in commercial law and soon became one of the leading Budapest law firms. Although Mátyás Eörsi was a full-time politician now, he is still active as an arbitrator at the Arbitration Court attached to the