Stephan Weil | |
|---|---|
 Weil in 2021 | |
| Minister-President of Lower Saxony | |
| Assumed office 19 February 2013 | |
| Deputy | Stefan Wenzel Bernd Althusmann Julia Hamburg |
| Preceded by | David McAllister |
| President of theBundesrat | |
| In office 1 November 2013 – 31 October 2014 | |
| First Vice President | Winfried Kretschmann |
| Preceded by | Winfried Kretschmann |
| Succeeded by | Volker Bouffier |
| Leader of the Social Democratic Party ofLower Saxony | |
| Assumed office 20 January 2012 | |
| General Secretary | Detlef Tanke Hanna Naber Dörte Liebetruth |
| Deputy | Carola Reimann Olaf Lies Johanne Modder Dörte Liebetruth Philipp Raulfs |
| Preceded by | Olaf Lies |
| Lord Mayor ofHanover | |
| In office 1 November 2006 – 19 February 2013 | |
| Preceded by | Herbert Schmalstieg |
| Succeeded by | Stefan Schostok |
| Member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony for Hannover-Buchholz | |
| Assumed office 19 February 2013 | |
| Preceded by | Gisela Konrath |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Stephan-Peter Weil (1958-12-15)15 December 1958 (age 66) Hamburg,West Germany(nowGermany) |
| Political party | Social Democratic Party of Germany(1980–) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
| Residence | Hannover-Kirchrode |
| Alma mater | University of Göttingen |
| Occupation |
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| Website | |
Stephan Weil (born 15 December 1958) is a German politician and the leader of theSocial Democratic Party inLower Saxony. On 20 January 2013, the SPD and theGreen party won the2013 Lower Saxony state election by one seat.[1] On 19 February 2013, he was electedMinister President of Lower Saxony with the votes of SPD andAlliance '90/The Greens.[2]From 1 November 2013 until 31 October 2014 he wasPresident of the Bundesrat andex officio deputy to thePresident of Germany. In November 2017, he was again electedMinister President with the votes of SPD andCDU.
Weil has lived inHanover since 1965, where he completed theabitur at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium. After hismandatory community service in 1978 he began alaw degree inGöttingen, which he finished with his firststate examination in 1983.[3] He then worked as alawyer in Hanover, and later apublic prosecutor andjudge in the Lower Saxony ministry of justice. In 1994, Weil became a member of theministerial council of Lower Saxony.
In his early years, Weil served aschairman of the SPDJusos in Hanover. From 1997 until late October 2006 he held the office of thecity treasurer.
In May 2006 he was chosen as the SPD candidate for the Hanover mayoral election on 10 September 2006 against theCDU politician Dirk Topeffer and Ingrid Wagemann ofAlliance '90/The Greens. He won an absolute majority in the first round. He succeeded Herbert Schmalstieg, the mayor of Hanover for 34 years on 1 November 2006. Weil held the office for 7 years, up to 2013 state election. Due to legal restrictions, Weil was automatically removed from the office of mayor when he became Minister President of Lower Saxony on 19 February 2013.[4]
From 29 January 2008 to 2011, Weil monthly answered questions from citizens in the TV programWarum Herr Weil (Why Mr. Weil) which airs every third Tuesday every month onHR Fernsehen.
On 18 September 2011 Weil announced that he would apply for the top candidate of the SPD for the2013 state election in Lower Saxony. He was elected as the top candidate with 53.3% of votes on 27 September 2011.[5] On 20 January 2012 he was voted as the chairman of SPD Lower Saxony.[6] In March, Weil was unanimously chosen as the SPD direct candidate for theHanover-Buchholz constituency.[7] On the state convention inHameln, Weil placed first with 98.95%.
Just weeks before thestate election, opinion polls indicated that Weil, with the help of the Greens, would easily defeat incumbentMinister-PresidentDavid McAllister.[8] After McAllister's Christian-liberal coalition had been considered to be the winner until late in the night, Weil's red-green coalition eventually won the election by a wafer-thin majority, resulting in a narrow majority of just one vote in the state parliament. At the time, his victory constituted the twelfth consecutive setback in a state vote forChancellorAngela Merkel’sCDU party and therefore was widely interpreted as indicative for thenational elections later that year.[9] Early on in his tenure, Weil emphasized consolidating Lower Saxony's finances.[10]
As Lower Saxony has a 20 percent stake inVolkswagen (VW), Weil has been an ex-officio member of the company's supervisory board since February 2013. Within the supervisory board, he serves on the mediation and the nomination committees.[11] Only a few months after Weil took office, Germany won a decisive victory over theEuropean Commission in its bid to preserve state influence at VW, when theEuropean Court of Justice rejected an attempt by the commission to abolish a state veto over key decisions such as factory closures, mergers and acquisitions.[12]
In August 2017, Weil called for parliament to be dissolved a few months early and new elections to be held (elections had been planned for 2018), after one deputy,Elke Twesten, who had not been nominated for reelection by the Green Party, had quit her party and joined the CDU in the opposition, costing his coalition government its one-seat parliamentary majority. This had endangered Weil's position because it hypothetically would have enabled the CDU to elect their leaderBernd Althusmann as Minister President by a motion of no confidence.[13][14]
Prior to the election, the SPD and its coalition had been in very low approval and poll ratings, but following this event the party won the election by a wide margin over the CDU, strongly improving their own result and winning many usual Greens voters for their best result sinceGerhard Schröder in 1998. Nonetheless, the red-green coalition lost its majority by two seats due to the weakened Greens, even though the two parties came much nearer to a majority than deemed possible in the latest polls. Despite the rough election campaign between SPD and CDU and heavy accusations over the party affiliation change as a manipulative move to bypass voters and shift the parliamentary majority, Weil succeeded in negotiating and forming a grand coalition with the CDU and Althusmann after the election. In November 2017, he was again electedMinister President with the votes of SPD and CDU.
In 2024, in response to the threat of mass layoffs atVolkswagen, Weil wanted to restoregovernment subsidies for the purchase ofelectric cars.[15]
In his capacity as Minister-President, Weil was electedvice president of theBundesrat from 1 March 2013,[16] and served asPresident of the Bundesrat from November 2013 to October 2014. On the Bundesrat, he is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and deputy chairman of the Committee on European Affairs.
In the negotiations to form aGrand Coalition ofChancellorAngela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU together with the BavarianCSU) and the SPD following the2013 federal elections, Weil was part of the SPD delegation in the working group on energy policy, led byPeter Altmaier andHannelore Kraft.
In the negotiations to form a so-calledtraffic light coalition of the SPD, theGreen Party and theFree Democratic Party (FDP) following the2021 federal elections, Weil was part of his party's delegation in the working group on climate change and energy policy, co-chaired byMatthias Miersch,Oliver Krischer andLukas Köhler.[17]
Weil was nominated by his party as delegate to theFederal Convention for the purpose of electing thePresident of Germany in2022.[18]
2023 Grand Cross of theOrder of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany[20]In 1987, Weil marriedpublic health expert Rosemarie Kerkow-Weil (born 1954), the former president ofLeibniz University Hannover who teaches at the HAWK Hochschule Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen. They have one son.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Herbert Schmalstieg | Mayor of Hanover 2006–2013 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Prime Minister of Lower Saxony 2013–present | Incumbent |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chairman of theSocial Democratic Party inLower Saxony 2012–present | Incumbent |
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| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
