Ms. Karla Wursterová will assume her duties as the Executive Director of the International Visegrad Fund on August 1, 2012, as the representative of the Slovak Republic. Ms. Wursterová will replace Mr. Petr Vágner in the position whose term ends on July 31, 2012.
Ms. Wursterová is an employee of the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs where she has been the Director of the Dept. of Development and Humanitarian Aid. Prior to that, she served at the Slovak Embassy in Prague.
International Visegrad Fund is an international organization with the seat in Bratislava. Its annual budget of €7 million consists of equal contributions of the Visegrad Group (V4) countries—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The Fund supports closer cooperation among the V4 countries and other regions through common projects in the fields of culture and sports, science and research, education, youth exchange, cross-border cooperation and tourism promotion. The main recipients of the grant funding are NGOs, schools and universities, municipalities and local governments but also private companies and individual citizens. The Fund also awards dozens of university scholarships annually to scholars from almost 20 countries of Central Europe, the Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership.
The position of the Executive Director rotates on a three-year basis among the V4 countries. Ms. Wursterová’s term starts a new round—the first director of the Fund was also a representative of the Slovak Republic—Mr. Urban Rusnák (2000–2003). Since then the Fund was chaired by Mr. Andrzej Jagodziński from Poland (2003–2006), Mr. Kristóf Forrai from Hungary (2006–2009) and Petr Vágner from the Czech Republic (2009–2012).