Horst Seehofer | |
|---|---|
 Seehofer in 2019 | |
| Minister for the Interior, Building and Community | |
| In office 14 March 2018 – 8 December 2021 | |
| Chancellor | Angela Merkel |
| Preceded by | Thomas de Maizière (Interior) |
| Succeeded by | Nancy Faeser (Interior and Community) Klara Geywitz (Housing, Urban Development and Building) |
| Leader of the Christian Social Union | |
| In office 25 October 2008 – 19 January 2019 | |
| General Secretary | Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg Alexander Dobrindt Andreas Scheuer Markus Blume |
| Preceded by | Erwin Huber |
| Succeeded by | Markus Söder |
| Minister-President of Bavaria | |
| In office 27 October 2008 – 13 March 2018 | |
| Deputy | Martin Zeil Ilse Aigner |
| Preceded by | Günther Beckstein |
| Succeeded by | Markus Söder |
| President of the Bundesrat | |
| In office 1 November 2011 – 31 October 2012 | |
| First Vice President | Hannelore Kraft |
| Preceded by | Hannelore Kraft |
| Succeeded by | Winfried Kretschmann |
| Acting President of Germany | |
| In office 17 February 2012 – 18 March 2012 | |
| Chancellor | Angela Merkel |
| Preceded by | Christian Wulff |
| Succeeded by | Joachim Gauck |
| Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection | |
| In office 22 November 2005 – 27 October 2008 | |
| Chancellor | Angela Merkel |
| Preceded by | Renate Künast |
| Succeeded by | Ilse Aigner |
| Minister for Health | |
| In office 6 May 1992 – 26 October 1998 | |
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Gerda Hasselfeldt |
| Succeeded by | Andrea Fischer |
| Member of theBundestag forIngolstadt | |
| In office 4 November 1980 – 27 October 2008 | |
| Preceded by | Karl Heinz Gierenstein |
| Succeeded by | Reinhard Brandl |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Horst Lorenz Seehofer (1949-07-04)4 July 1949 (age 76) |
| Political party | Christian Social Union |
| Spouse | Karin Starck |
| Children | 4 |
| Signature |  |
| Website | Official website |
Horst Lorenz Seehofer (born 4 July 1949) is a German politician who served asMinister for the Interior, Building and Community underChancellorAngela Merkel from 2018 to 2021. A member of theChristian Social Union (CSU), he served as the18th minister-president of Bavaria from 2008 to 2018 andLeader of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria from 2008 to 2019.
First elected to theBundestag in1980, he served asMinister for Health and Social Security in the Christian-liberal cabinets ofHelmut Kohl from 1992 to 1998, going to the opposition afterwards and returning to the government asMinister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in thegrand coalition cabinet ofAngela Merkel from 2005 to 2008. Following a disastrous result for his party in the2008 Bavarian state election, he became both Leader of the CSU andMinister-president of Bavaria, an office he had never sought, after forming acoalition government with the liberalFree Democratic Party (FDP), the first coalition on state level in five decades. In2013 he returned his party to an absolute majority on state level. He served asPresident of the Bundesrat from 2011 to 2012. As such he wasacting head of state of Germany from the resignation of PresidentChristian Wulff on 17 February 2012 until the election ofJoachim Gauck as Wulff's successor on 18 March 2012.[1]
A staunch opponent ofChancellorAngela Merkel's response to the2010s migrant crisis,[2] Seehofer threatened to file a formal complaint with theConstitutional Court,[3] with the historicCDU/CSU alliance in danger of splitting and running against each other in the whole of Germany for the first time, but neither happened. He is a proponent of a federal cap on the number of refugees the German government is to take in.[4] After faring historically badly in the2017 federal election, the party receiving its worst result since 1949, and unsuccessfully trying to run for a third term as minister-president in 2018, he was pressured by his party to resign and instead accepted the office of Minister for the Interior, Building and Community (originally intended forJoachim Herrmann) in Merkel's fourth government, in order to shape the migrant policy after his views. In July 2018, a week-long dissent between Seehofer and Merkelnearly brought down the government and again seriously threatened a CDU/CSU split, but they ultimately found a compromise.
After secondary school, Seehofer started working as civil servant in the local administration inIngolstadt.[5]
Seehofer served as member of the German federal parliament (Bundestag) as a directly elected delegate (Direktkandidat) from hisconstituencyIngolstadt from 1980 until 2008. At the2005 federal election he received 65.9 percent of the votes in his district.
Seehofer wasFederal Minister for Health and Social Security from 1992 to 1998 in thecabinet ofChancellorHelmut Kohl.
In 1993, Seehofer ordered that Germany's 117-year-old Federal Health Agency be dissolved following a review of how the government in the 1980s handled the cases of thousands ofhemophiliacs who were infected through blood contaminated withHIV. The Health Ministry took over the agency's responsibilities.[6] Also, Seehofer announced that Germany would contribute to an emergency fund for victims of the scandal.[7] In the context of the crisis, he came under considerable pressure to resign.[8]
After Helmut Kohl lost his bid for a fifth term in the1998 federal election, in the opposition Seehofer became deputy chairman of theCDU/CSUparliamentary group of the Bundestag in October 1998, which was led at the time by Kohl's successorWolfgang Schäuble. Ahead of the2005 elections,Edmund Stoiber included Seehofer in hisshadow cabinet for the Christian Democrats’ unsuccessful campaign to unseatChancellorGerhard Schröder.[9] He served as Health MinisterUlla Schmidt's counterpart in negotiating the cross-party healthcare bill of 2003. Because of his disagreement with CDU leaderAngela Merkel on flat-rate contributions (Gesundheitsprämie) to the federal health insurance[10] he resigned from his leadership post in the parliamentary group on 22 November 2004 but remained deputy chairman of his party and kept his Bundestag seat.
Seehofer was appointedFederal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in thecabinet of Angela Merkel and stayed in office from 2005 to 2008.
After his party lost more than 17% of the popular vote in theBavarian state elections of 2008, incumbent Minister-PresidentGünther Beckstein and Chairman of the CSU,Erwin Huber, announced their resignations.[11][12] Seehofer was quickly proposed as their successor. At a party convention on 25 October he was affirmed as the new Chairman of the CSU with 90% of the votes, and on 27 October he was elected Minister-President by theLandtag with votes from theFree Democratic Party, forming the firstcoalition government in Bavaria since 1962.
During the term 2011–2012, Seehofer served asPresident of the German Bundesrat. As such, he functioned as Acting head of state fromChristian Wulff's resignation on 17 February 2012[13][14][15][16][17] until theelection ofJoachim Gauck on 18 March 2012.
Under Seehofer's leadership, the State of Bavaria took to theFederal Constitutional Court in 2012 in order to dispute the legality of Germany's post-World War II system of financial redistribution among the country's 16 states. Bavaria, a beneficiary of the system until 1988, had paid more in 2011 than it got out in the 40 years it was a net recipient.[18] The State ofHesse, another per-capita contributor, joined the lawsuit.[19]
Also under Seehofer's leadership, the CSU won an absolute majority in the2013 state elections, heralding strong momentum for the conservative parties in thefederal elections the following week.[20] From 2013 to 2018 Seehofer also was a member of theBavarianLandtag (state parliament) representing the constituency ofNeuburg-Schrobenhausen. Together with Angela Merkel andSigmar Gabriel, he later led the negotiations to form acoalition government on the national level. In late 2013, Seehofer won a record 95.3 percent of the party's votes to continue as chairman.[21]
In early 2015, under pressure from younger rivals, Seehofer announced he would retire at the next state elections in 2018.[22] Later that year, when was chosen the fifth time as leader of the CSU, he received 87.2 percent of the vote, some 8 percent down on the result he achieved in 2013.[23]
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In August 2016, Seehofer said he may break the unity of the "sister parties" (CDU/CSU) and run a separate CSU campaign in the2017 national elections, a move widely seen as an effort to keep pressure on Merkel (being the leader of CDU) to shift to a more restrictive refugee policy in theEuropean migrant crisis.[24] He also announced to stay on as CSU leader beyond 2018.[25] When the CSU's share of the vote in Bavaria fell 10 percentage points compared with 2013, to below 39 per cent, Seehofer faced demands to resign.[26] On 4 December 2017, he announced to step down as Minister President and not run as leading candidate in the 2018 state elections;[27] instead, he said he would hand over the office toMarkus Söder in the first quarter of 2018.[28]
On 1 March 2018, Seehofer confirmed that he will be in Merkel's cabinet if the SPD party members vote in favour of the coalition.[29] He took over the role of Interior Minister.[29] A policy Seehofer announced is that he has a "master plan for faster asylum procedures, and more consistent deportations."[30] He wants a "zero tolerance" policy toward criminals.[30] On 15 March 2018, Seehofer stated that he disagreed with the belief that Islam is part of Germany,[31] a topic already often discussed in Germany, since Federal PresidentChristian Wulff had said in a 2010 speech that Islam was part of Germany. He noted that certain public holidays correspond to certain church holidays.[31]
Under Seehofer's master plan Germany would reject migrants who have already been deported or have an entry ban and would instruct police to turn away all migrants who have registered elsewhere in the EU, no matter if these countries agreed to take them back.[32][33] Merkel feared that unilaterally sending migrants back to neighbouring countries without seeking a multilateral European agreement could endanger the stability of the European Union. In June 2018, Seehofer backed down from a threat to bypass her in the disagreement over immigration policy until she would come back on 1 July from attempts to find a solution at European level. During these weeks the media was speculating not only on a government fall down but also on a split of the CDU/CSU alliance, which consists of the CSU in Bavaria and the CDU in the remaining 15 states. It would have meant that the CSU would run for elections all over Germany and the CDU would run in Bavaria, which they have never done before.
On 1 July 2018, Seehofer rejected the agreement Merkel had obtained with EU countries as too little and declared his resignation during a meeting of his party's executive, but they refused to accept it.[34][35][36] During the night of 2 July 2018, Seehofer and Merkel announced they had settled their differences and agreed to instead accept a compromise of tighter border control.[37][38] As a result of the agreement, Seehofer agreed to not resign,[39] and to negotiate bilateral agreements with the specific countries himself. Seehofer was criticised for almost bringing the government down while the monthly number of migrants targeted by that policy was in single figures.
When the2021 European floods caused Germany's worst natural disaster in more than half a century, with more than 170 dead and thousands missing, Seehofer again faced calls from opposition politicians to resign over the high death toll.[40]
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In 2010, remarks made by Seehofer asserting according that Turkish and Arab migrants were no longer needed in Germany were strongly criticised by the Turkish community and by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.[41]
In 2011, he added further that those who wanted to stay in Germany should be ready to sign up to German values. He proposed a change to the Bavarian Constitution so that the authorities in the state would be under obligation to help with the integration process but that minorities, too, should be prepared to actively support the integration process.[42]
In late 2015, Seehofer and the CSU sharply criticised Merkel's refugee policy, as the party's home turf of Bavaria was the main entry point for refugees and other migrants arriving in Germany.[2] Under pressure from Seehofer and his allies, Merkel later restricted cash benefits for refugees and addedKosovo,Albania andMontenegro to the list of "safe" countries to which migrants can be returned.[22] He repeatedly called on the federal government to set a cap on the number of refugees Germany should be taking in,[4] saying that the country was able to manage only "200,000 applicants [per year] for asylum … at the most."[43] Seehofer later threatened to file a complaint against the government's refugee policy with Germany'sConstitutional Court.[3]
In September 2019, Seehofer said that he was willing to accept 25 per cent of the migrants who reach Italy by sea, only if everything goes as discussed.[44]
Seehofer is opposed toTurkey becoming a member of theEuropean Union.[42] In 2009, he stated that Turkey "as a self-proclaimed representative of the Muslim world, clearly doesn't fit in".[45]
In December 2010 and November 2011, Seehofer was the first Minister-President of Bavaria who visited the neighbouringCzech Republic; this was considered an important step in the dispute over the expulsion of theSudeten Germans after the Second World War. In February 2013, Seehofer receivedPetr Nečas as the first Czech Prime Minister for an official visit to Bavaria.[citation needed]
In an interview with news magazineDer Spiegel in late 2014, Seehofer warned Germany's foreign ministerFrank-Walter Steinmeier and his fellow Social Democrats (SPD) against pursuing a more friendly approach towards Russia in theRusso-Ukrainian War, arguing that "if Mr. Steinmeier is pursuing his own form of diplomacy alongside the chancellor, that would be highly dangerous."[46][47] He added that, even within his own party, there was already too much friendly sentiment towards Russia that had to be kept in check.[48]
However, in 2015, he held that it would be "Realpolitik" to try to involve Russia in tackling global crises.[49]
In early 2016, his joint visit withEdmund Stoiber to Moscow for talks with Russian PresidentVladimir Putin was met by harsh criticism, even from CDU politicians.[3] By early 2017, Seehofer reiterated his calls to lift theEU sanctions against Russia.[50]
In September 2018, a few days afterChemnitz protests against migrants and refugees, Seehofer criticised the debate on migration again saying it is "the mother of all political problems" in Germany.[51]
In 2012, Seehofer demanded that theGerman constitution be changed to permitreferendums on decisions to deepenEuropean integration and transfer powers toEuropean institutions. That same year, he criticisedInternational Monetary Fund managing directorChristine Lagarde's proposal for measures that would result in a mutualization ofEurozone debt, arguing that shared liability forsovereign debt and a banking union would remove pressure from governments to carry out economic policy changes.[52]
In 2013, Seehofer madePeter Gauweiler a deputy leader of the CSU in a bid to court the party's euro critics; however, Gauweiler quit after two years in protest against the extension ofGreece's aid program.[53]
Grand Cross of theOrder of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2023)
Bavarian Order of Merit (2008)
Grand Cross of theOrder of Merit of Portugal (2009)
Knight Grand Cross of theOrder of the Star of Italy (2014)[56][57]Seehofer married toKarin Starck. They live in the Ingolstadt district ofGerolfing. A father of three, Seehofer failed in a 2007 bid for the CSU leadership when it emerged that he had a daughter born out of wedlock, from an extramarital affair with a much younger staffer of the German Bundestag.[5] After a period of indecision, he opted to return to his wife.[21]
In 2002, Seehofer survived a seriousmyocarditis.[22] His health again became a subject of public debate when he collapsed during a speech at a party event in early 2015.[61]
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Minister of Health 1992–1998 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection 2005–2008 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister President of Bavaria 2008–2018 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of the German Bundesrat 2011–2012 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of Germany Acting 2012 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded byas Minister of the Interior | Minister of the Interior, Building and Community 2018–2021 | Succeeded byas Minister of Interior and Community |
| Preceded byas Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety | Succeeded byas Minister of Housing, Urban Development and Construction | |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Leader of theChristian Social Union 2008–2019 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
