Milan Zver was born on 25 May 1962 in Ljubljana. He attended primary school at Destrnik and high school in Ptuj. In 1982, he enrolled in the Faculty of Sociology, Political Sciences and Journalism at the University of Ljubljana. He graduated in 1987, then enrolled in a master’s course and was employed as a junior researcher at the same Faculty. In 1989, he did a three month research course on the history of political thought under the mentorship of Professor Horst Haselsteiner at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz, Austria, where he also wrote most of his master’s dissertation, successfully defending it in 1990. In 1992, he took a break from academic research work and started working for the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, although he partially pursued his academic career by teaching ‘the History of Slovenian Political Thought’. From 1994 to 1999, he worked at the Municipality of Ljubljana, mainly as Secretary of the City Council. Following that, he held the post of associate expert at the National Assembly for a few months. In 1998, he completed his doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Social Sciences and qualified as a university teacher for social sciences in June. Later that year, he began lecturing and was in fact the head teacher for sociology on both higher and university education programmes at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Maribor. Since his appointment as a principle lecturer, he has also actively participated at several meetings of political scientists (Slovenian Days of Political Science, held annually in Portorož and organised by the Slovenian Political Science Society in association with the Faculty of Social Sciences; the 2002 EIBE Conference in Athens) as well as other expert meetings (in Sofia, Tallinn, Prague, Zagreb) which were organised (either independently or jointly) by various foundations (the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the International Republican Institute, the Konrad Adenauer Foundaiton).

He was also invited to become a lecturer of sociology at the newly founded Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security at the University of Maribor. In 2002, he published a monograph entitled Demokracija v klasični slovenski politični misli (‘Democracy in Traditional Slovenian Political Thought’). His earlier works include two monographs, both published in 1996: In dan bo sijal (‘And the Day Will Shine’) and Sto let socialdemokracije (‘One Hundred Years of Social Democracy’). He has written many scholarly papers published for the Slovenian and foreign academic press. The year 1998 saw the publication of a collection of papers and essays entitled Človekove pravice in svoboščine v tranziciji: primer Slovenija (‘Human Rights and Freedoms in Transition: the Case of Slovenia’. He was also the editor of the collection entitled Pučnikova znanstvena in politična misel (‘Pučnik's Scientific and Political Thought’), which was published in 2004.

Throughout this time he has been active in professional, public and political life. He is the president of the Ivan Cankar Society, a member of the board of directors of the Vrtnica (‘Rose’) Humanitarian Organisation, and he has also been a member of the Executive Committee of the Slovenian Political Science Society. In the 1990's, he was a government advisor, a local councillor, and from 1997 to 2002 in the previous mandate he was a national councillor. In the last elections, he was elected to the National Assembly.

Minister Zver is fluent in German, English, and Croatian, and has a basic knowledge of French.