Gunnar Hökmark is the chairman of the Swedish think tank Stockholm Free World Forum and is an active opinion leader regularly writing for Swedish newspapers. He was a Member of the European Parliament between 2004 and 2019 and served as the leader of the Swedish delegation to the EPP. From 2007 to 2014 he was elected Vice-Chairman of the EPP Group in the European Parliament and chaired the EPP Working Group on Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy. In 2009-2013 he served as Chairman of the Delegation to the EU-Croatia Joint Parliamentary Committee and was an active member of the Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. Hökmark completed a BA in business administration and economics at Lund University in 1975, after which he joined Swedish Unilever 1976 as trainee and became product manager 1977. In 1979 he was elected Chairman of the Moderate Youth, and in 1981 became Chairman of the Democratic Youth Community of Europe. In 1982, Hökmark was elected into the Swedish Parliament where he was the spokesman of privacy policy, energy policy and economic affairs, as well as President of the Standing Committee on Constitutional Affairs. In 2004 he was elected into the European Parliament.
Mr Hökmark led the Swedish European Union membership referendum campaign while serving as the Secretary General of the moderate party (1991-2000), and was responsible for the process of the Moderate Party joining the European People’s Party as full member. In 1989 he started the so-called Monday movement, a popular movement supporting the independence of the Baltic States, which today is manifested by a monument in Stockholm. For this this initiative, Hökmark was awarded Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian orders. In 1993 Hökmark established the Jarl Hjalmarson Foundation with international activities to support the development of democracy and rule of law in former dictatorships, which he chaired until 2000. In 2018 Hökmark was awarded by The Society of the Survivors of the Holocaust for his commitment to combatting antisemitism and xenophobia. He continues to be active in the European Alliance for Holocaust Survivors, an alliance he has formerly served as Chair.