František Lipka

Since the end of the 1980s, he has been active in diplomacy. He served as an ambassador of Slovakia in France, Belgium and Luxembourg. In 2006 Lipka became the Referendum Commission President (Chairman of the Electoral Commission) for the upcoming Montenegrin Independence Referendum and was in charge of supervision over the course of the referendum, its results and a safeguard of the adherence to correct and valid election processes. On Monday, 22 May 2006 he announced that the preliminary results of the referendum were 55.4% in favor of independence, thus meeting the previously set independence requirement in the form of a supermajority threshold of 55% in favor.

Lipka studied Slovak and the Serbo-Croatian language at the School of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava (1969). He worked as an external editor of the World Literature Revue magazine, cooperated with magazines "Smena na nedeľu" (Sunday Smena), "Mladá tvorba" (Young Creation), "Slovenské pohľady" (Slovak Views), Romboid; he alternated between posts as a lecturer of the Slovak language and literature at the University of Novi Sad School of Philosophy and at the Comenius University in Bratislava, lecturing on the history of Serbian and Croatian literature. He is also active as a sommelier and since 1994 Lipka has been serving as the President of the International Jury for the Bestowment of the International Vine and Wine Organization awards(Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin), headquartered in Paris.

František Lipka (born 22 February 1946 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia) is a Slovak diplomat, poet and translator, who contributed to the process of the creation of independent Montenegro.