Arnaud Gouillon (; born 27 November 1985) is a French and Serbian humanitarian worker and the founder of far-right Solidarité Kosovo, a French non-governmental controversed humanitarian organization devoted to helping Serbs living in enclaves in Kosovo. He serves as the acting director of the Office for Cooperation with the DIaspora and the Serbs in the Region in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia since 26 November 2020.
He is author of the book "All My Roads lead to Serbia" (in Serbian: "Svi moji putevi vode ka Srbiji").
He was awarded with the highest State and church decorations of Serbia for the fifteen years of his humanitarian work.
In 2012 he settled in Belgrade with his family. He is active in several cultural associations and regularly holds lectures and panels around Serbia and abroad.
In 2015, he received the Serbian citizenship based on his merits in the field of humanitarian work and the passport of the Republic of Serbia was delivered to him at an official ceremony in the Palace of Serbia by the Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia, Nebojša Stefanović. He joined the Serbian Progressive Party in 2023.
Biography
Youth
He was born on 27 November 1985. in Grenoble (France). As the youngest of three children, he grew up in a harmonious family in which traditions, patriotism and historical friendship between France and Serbia were nurtured. Influenced by these family values, his view of events in the former Yugoslavia is significantly different from the prevailing views in the West.
When in 2004. Anti-Serb pogroms broke out throughout Kosovo and Metohia, he decided to take concrete action and provide assistance to families, innocent victims of persecution. At the age of nineteen, he founded the humanitarian organization "Solidarity for Kosovo" with the aim of helping the Serbian people and other national minorities living in enclaves in Kosovo and Metohia.
Education
He completed his elementary education in his hometown of Jarrie and his secondary education in Vizille. In 2002, he enrolled in the Faculty of Physics with an optional Master of Mathematics at the University of Grenoble, the second best university in France and 32nd in the world in Physics according to the Shanghai List. In 2004, he passed the examination for admission to the distinguished Engineering Polytechnic School of the University of Grenoble, majoring in Ecology and Risk Prevention, while in 2007 He obtained the master's degree with the title of engineer at the age of 22, in the field of "environmental protection". In 2012 he attended a Master of Political Science at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade, majoring in "Political System of Serbia and Institutions".
In addition to his native language French, he speaks Serbian, English and Russian.
Career
Between 2007 and 2010 he worked as an engineer at L'Oréal in Paris, at the Chamber of Commerce in Bordeaux, as a professor of physics at a French school in Cairo and as a quality coordinator in Zvornik (Republika Srpska) for Studen-Prom, a company exporting frozen food products to France.
Since 2011, he has been employed as the director of the charity NGO Solidarity for Kosovo (), which he founded when he was a student and where he was volunteering during seven years.
By the decision of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, since 2020, the acting Director of the Office for Cooperation with the Diaspora and Serbs in the region.
Humanitarian work
He is a regular interlocutor of the French media who want to write about the humanitarian situation in Kosovo and Metohija. He organized a 52-minute documentary about the life of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija, aired four times on French television channel KTO and twice on the Serbian National Television channel RTS. The film entitled "Kosovo, Christianity at Risk" was awarded as the best performance at the Zaječar Documentary Spiritual Film Festival and at the 2018 International Orthodox Film Festival in Kruševac.