You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in German. (December 2019)Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Erik Marquardt]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template{{Translated|de|Erik Marquardt}} to thetalk page. For more guidance, seeWikipedia:Translation.

Erik Marquardt MEP
Erik Marquardt, 2023
Member of the European Parliament forGermany
Incumbent
Assumed office 2 July 2019
Personal details
Born	(1987-10-20)20 October 1987 (age 38) Neubrandenburg
Nationality	German
Political party	Alliance 90/The Greens

Erik Marquardt (born 20 October 1987) is a German politician who is serving as aMember of the European Parliament for theAlliance 90/The Greens political party.^[1]

Marquardt grew up inWilhelmshagen in theBerlin district ofTreptow-Köpenick.^[2] After graduating from high school inBerlin-Friedrichshagen, he studiedchemistry atTechnische Universität Berlin (TUB) from 2008 to 2013. From 2011 he studiedpolitics, administration andsociology at theFernuniversität Hagen. He has not yet successfully completed any of the courses.^[3] From 2010 to October 2014 he was a member of the TUB Board of Trustees. From 2011 to 2013 he was a member of the board of the Free Association of Student Unions (FZS).^[4]

From the beginning of his studies, Marquardt was politically active in various university committees, including at the TUB inAStA departments, in the student parliament, in the commission for teaching and studies, in the board of trustees at Campusgrün, in the action alliance against tuition fees, in the education strike and incity politics. In the FZS board, he was responsible for the committees on study reform, organizedstudent body/political mandate, women's and gender policy, the committees for seven federal states, and the working groups onanti-fascism/anti-racism andecology.^[5]

On 25 January 2012, the Committee on Education, Research, and Technology Assessment of the GermanBundestag held a liveexpert discussion on tuition fees. Marquardt took part as a FZS board member and the only student. In his statement, he rejected a "campus toll" in principle because education is a public service, and a human right that thestate must guarantee. "Human rights cannot be bought, the state must ensure them." No other expert addressed this argument.^[6]

From 2009 to 2015, Marquardt was a member of theGreen Youth (GJ). From November 2013 to October 2014 he was political director, and from October 2014 to November 2015 he was one of the twospokespersons of their federal association.^[7]

In 2014, the GJ called on all delegates at the Green Party's federal party conference to stop theTTIP negotiations. According to Marquardt, the aim of this motion was to encourage the Federal party to weaken its previous support for theTTIP agreements and to engage with the criticism of TTIP.^[7] The 44thGJ federal congress in April 2015 rejected theasylum law reform of theCDU-SPD coalition government and criticized the approval of the Green Prime MinisterWinfried Kretschmann. At the time, Marquardt did not see much difference between the "realists" and "idealists" in the Green Party. Together with federal spokeswoman Theresa Kalmer, he wantedcontroversial debates and a consistent stand by its own demands from the federal party.^[8]

On the 25th day ofGerman unity on 3 October 2015, the GJtweeted a reminder of the dissolution of theGDR and asked provocatively why Germany should not "succeed" again. Right-wing politicians from theAfD, CSU andCDU reacted indignantly and tried to make a scandal out of the tweet. Marquardt explained that German unity was being celebrated under the motto "overcoming borders", while the governing parties were openly discussingborder fences to protect againstrefugees, and people were dying every day at the European external borders. "The fact that we are no longer even allowed to speak out loud about the vision ofEuropean integration, including a European state without secure external borders, shows that the borders in people's minds are far from being overcome." In response to Green critics of the tweet, he stressed that it was theGJ's job to be provocative and to put its finger on the sore spot. The Greens had previously offered a greater space for debate, which had been used provocatively to initiate debates.^[9] The tweet served the right-wing extremist magazine Compact after the 2019 European elections as evidence for the false claim that the Greens were planning to abolish Germany as a nation state.^[10]

At the Greens' federal delegate conference in November 2015 inHalle (Saale), Marquardt and the GJ federal executive board ensured that demands for improving refugee accommodation and introducing asylumvisas as a form of legal escape routes were included in a key motion by the federal executive board on asylum policy. The sentence that all asylum seekers should be granted the right to remain was rejected, however.^[7]

Marquardt was one of the GJ federal spokespersons who worked continuously with theYoung Socialists to push through a red-red-green majority in their parties and in theBundestag.^[7] In 2018, he also emphasized the central role of the GJ federal spokespersons as representatives of the youth association in the federal party and the important role of the federal delegate conference, whose decisions form the basis for the actions of the federal executive board.^[7]

In November 2015, Marquardt was elected to the party council ofAlliance 90/The Greens. In May 2017, the Greens elected him as their direct candidate for the 2017 federal election in theBerlin-Treptow -Köpenick constituency, with sixth place on the list.^[11]

Marquardt received five percent of the first votes in hisconstituency, and his party received 7.8 percent of the second votes.^[12] This meant that he failed to enter theBundestag.

After the 2021 federal election, coalition negotiations between theSPD,FDP andGreens to form the new federal government began in October 2021. Marquardt was one of four Green politicians to take part in the negotiations on migration andasylum. The negotiations were burdened by the targetedexpulsion of refugees fromBelarus to the West. A difficult compromise was expected with FDP and SPD politicians, who had previously given priority to deportations, including to war zones. While the Green election program is based on human rights, Green coalition partners had regularly participated in such deportations.^[13]

Media related toErik Marquardt at Wikimedia Commons

• Living people
• MEPs for Germany 2019–2024
• Alliance 90/The Greens MEPs
• 1987 births
• MEPs for Germany 2024–2029

• CS1 German-language sources (de)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Government and politics articles needing translation from German Wikipedia
• Use dmy dates from December 2019
• Pages using Template:Post-nominals with missing parameters
• Commons category link from Wikidata