Jan Zahradil is a Czech politician for the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the former president of the European Conservatives and Reformists in Europe – ECR. He has been a Member of the European Parliament since the Czech Republic entered the European Union in 2004. Zahradil also served as Member of Parliament for Prague from 1998 to 2004. In his current third term at the European Parliament, Zahradil is a member of the international trade committee, serving as its Deputy Chairman. He was one of the founding members of the euro-realist ECR group, which went on to become the third largest group in the European Parliament in 2014. In March of 2011 he was elected the ECR President, thus becoming the first Czech MEP ever to have become leader of an EP group.