Jürgen Rüttgers | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Rüttgers in 2010 | |
| Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia | |
| In office 22 June 2005 – 14 July 2010 | |
| President | Horst Köhler Christian Wulff |
| Chancellor | Gerhard Schröder Angela Merkel |
| Deputy | Andreas Pinkwart |
| Preceded by | Peer Steinbrück |
| Succeeded by | Hannelore Kraft |
| Federal Minister of Education, Science, Research, and Technology (Germany) | |
| In office 17 November 1994 – 14 October 1998 | |
| President | Richard von Weizsäcker Roman Herzog |
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Paul Krüger(Science, Research and Technology) Karl-Hans Laermann(Education) |
| Succeeded by | Edelgard Bulmahn(Education, Science and Research) Werner Müller(Technology) |
| Chairman of the North Rhein-Westfalia CDU | |
| In office 29 January 1999 – 6 November 2010 | |
| Preceded by | Norbert Blüm |
| Succeeded by | Norbert Röttgen |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1951-06-26)26 June 1951 (age 74) |
| Political party | Christian Democratic Union (CDU) |
| Website | juergen-ruettgers |
Jürgen Rüttgers (born 26 June 1951) is a German politician of theChristian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as the 9thMinister-President ofNorth Rhine-Westphalia from 2005 to 2010.[1]
Rüttgers was born inCologne.[2] He holds degrees in Law and History from theUniversity of Cologne and a Dr. Jur. (PhD) in Law (1979). He became a member of K.D.St. V. Rappoltstein Köln, a Catholic student fraternity that is member of theCartellverband.
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Rüttgers was a Member of the GermanBundestag from1987 until 2000. In 1991 he succeededFriedrich Bohl asFirst Secretary of the parliamentary group, in this position assisting the parliamentary group's chairmanWolfgang Schäuble.
Rüttgers served as Federal Minister for Education, Science, Research and Technology inChancellorHelmut Kohl'sfifth cabinet from 1994 to 1998. During his time as minister, he was – together withLuigi Berlinguer (Italy),Claude Allegre (France), andBaroness Tessa Blackstone (United Kingdom) – one of the heads of the "Sorbonne declaration", the joint declaration on harmonisation of the architecture of the European higher education system, on 25 May 1998. That was the starting point of the so-called "Bologna process". He also successfully introduced a law under which online providers can be prosecuted for offering a venue for content illegal in Germany – such aschild pornography or Nazi propaganda – if they do so knowingly and it is "technically possible and reasonable" to prevent it. Also, the law made Germany the first country to set rules for so-calleddigital signatures and give them the status of a legal document.[3]
Between 1998 and 2000, Rüttgers served as deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, again under Schäuble's leadership.
In 2000, Rüttgers succeededNorbert Blüm as chairman of the CDU in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. As head of the party in Germany's most populous state, he commanded considerable influence, especially with its grassroots.[4] He also became the party's group leader in the state parliament. In this capacity, he notably opposed the takeover ofMannesmann by the British telecommunications companyVodafone in 2000, one of thelargest-ever company takeovers worldwide.[5]
Amid the revelations of theCDU donations scandal in early 2000, Rüttgers – who ran as the party's candidate in a crucial state election in North Rhine-Wesphalia that year – was one of the few leading figures who remained loyal to former ChancellorHelmut Kohl even after prosecutors began a criminal investigation into Kohl's financial dealings.[6] By January 2000, daily newspaperSüddeutsche Zeitung claimed that Kohl, angered by party chairmanWolfgang Schäuble's efforts to distance himself from the scandal surrounding secret payments to the party, was encouraging Rüttgers to make a bid for the leadership at the CDU's annual conference; instead,Angela Merkel was elected as Schäuble's successor[6] and Rüttgers became one of her four deputies, alongsideVolker Rühe,Annette Schavan andChristian Wulff.[7]
In his role as chairman of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia, Rüttgers later publicly endorsed Merkel as the party's candidate to challenge incumbentChancellorGerhard Schröder in the2002 federal elections; instead,Edmund Stoiber ended up being the joint candidate of CDU and CSU.[8][9]
In the2005 state elections, Rüttgers was the opposition Christian Democratic Union's front-runner for the second time. After both CDU andFDP won a majority of seats in the elections, they formed a coalition to take over government from the formerSPD andGreen party coalition led byPeer Steinbrück. Rüttgers was elected Minister-President ofNorth Rhine-Westphalia on 22 June, the state's first CDU Minister-President in 39 years. His cabinet, notably included representatives of the CDU's more liberal wing, such asArmin Laschet (as State Minister for Generations, Family, Women and Integration) andKarl-Josef Laumann (as State Minister of Labor, Health and Social Affairs).
On the national level, Rüttgers was part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the SPD on a coalition agreement following the2005 federal elections,[10] which paved the way to the formation ofChancellorAngela Merkel'sfirst government. Under the leadership of Merkel as party chairwoman, he was re-elected vice-chairman of theCDU in November 2006, this time alongsideRoland Koch,Annette Schavan andChristian Wulff.[11]
During his time in office, Rüttgers came under severe criticism for failing to mend the state's public finances. One of the reasons was the crisis at the state-owned lenderWestLB, which led his government to set aside 1.5 billion in 2008.[12] Rüttgers long wanted the bank to stay independent[13] and categorically ruled out a merger withLBBW.[14] However, by 2007, he andRoland Koch, his counterpart from the state of Hesse, agreed on approving a merger of their respective state-owned banks, WestLB andLandesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba).[14] WestLB was eventually broken up in 2012 after years of losses and controversy.
Also in 2007, Rüttgers helped negotiate an agreement on closing Germany's lastanthracite mines and clearing the way for the stock market flotation of the mines' owner,RAG AG, at the time the largest German coal producer and an international chemicals, energy and real estate conglomerate.[15]
Between 2007 and 2009, Rüttgers was one of 32 members of theSecond Commission on the modernization of the federal state, which had been established to reform the division of powers between federal and state authorities in Germany.
Shortly before the2010 state elections, Rüttgers's public image was damaged by a party fund-raising scandal,[16] and local issues like education and the troubles of municipalities with heavy debt burdens were central to the campaign.[17] He led his party to an electoral defeat; the steep drop of 10 percentage points compared with the previous election, in 2005, was even larger than most analysts had predicted and gave the Christian Democrats their worst postwar showing in that state.[17] The loss also meant Chancellor Merkel could no longer count on a majority for her governing coalition in theBundesrat, composed of delegations from all 16 states. In July 2010, Rüttgers stepped down as caretaker premier and also gave up his position as state party chairman.[18]
Rüttgers joined the Düsseldorf office of German law firm Beiten Burkhardt asOf Counsel in March 2011. In this capacity, he is a member of the firm's Assets, Succession, Foundations practice group and also advises international companies on investments in Germany and German companies on international investments.[19]
In May 2011,Deutsche Bahn nominated Rüttgers as executive director of the Brussels-basedCommunity of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER);[20] instead, Libor Lochman was eventually appointed to the position.[21][22]
Rüttgers was a CDU delegate to theFederal Convention for the purpose of electing thePresident of Germany in 2017[23][24] and2022.[25]
Since 2021, Rüttgers has been a member of the so-calledLimbach Commission (Advisory Commission on the return of cultural property seized as a result of Nazi persecution, especially Jewish property), a panel convened by the German government to give recommendations on restitution claims regarding art works stolen or purchased under duress by the Nazis.[26]
In addition, Rüttgers has held several paid and unpaid positions since leaving politics, including the following:
During his political career, Rüttgers proved to be a conservative on social issues such as immigration. He also positioned himself as a "workers' leader" on economics, defending labor rights and opposing business demands for deregulation of the economy.[34] Unlike many in his party at the time, he was also in favor of expanding day care for young children and supported all-day schools.[35] Following the CDU's performance in the2005 federal elections and the formation of the first government under Chancellor Merkel, Rüttgers blamed her campaign for talking "too much aboutflat tax and not enough about the people." Instead, he called on the party to shed its "capitalist" image.[36]
In his 1993 bookDinosaurs of Democracy, Rüttgers attacked Germany's main parties and the government for being unwilling to decentralise political power to ordinary people.[37]
Rüttgers is widely known for his views on immigration and the much-discussed phrase "Kinder statt Inder" ("children instead ofIndians") which was a media interpretation of "Statt Inder an die Computer müssen unsere Kinder an die Computer" ("instead of Indians in front of computers, our children must be in front of computers"), during an election campaign (which he eventually lost) at a time when there was a parallel nationwide discussion about whether or not immigration rules should be liberalised on behalf of attracting more highly qualified foreign academics to the German labor market.
In response to Rüttgers's much-discussed phraseKinder statt Inder, Germany's Green Party overwhelmed his Internet mailbox with thousands of messages. The Internet attack was the first of its kind in German politics.[38]
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Minister-President ofNorth Rhine-Westphalia 2005–2010 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
