Hannelore Kraft | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Kraft in 2017 | |
| Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia | |
| In office 14 July 2010 – 27 June 2017 | |
| Deputy | Sylvia Löhrmann |
| Preceded by | Jürgen Rüttgers |
| Succeeded by | Armin Laschet |
| President of the Bundesrat | |
| In office 1 November 2010 – 31 October 2011 | |
| Deputy | Jens Böhrnsen |
| Preceded by | Jens Böhrnsen |
| Succeeded by | Horst Seehofer |
| Leader of theSocial Democratic Party inNorth Rhine-Westphalia | |
| In office 20 January 2007 – 14 May 2017 | |
| Deputy | Marc Herter Elvan Korkmaz |
| Preceded by | Jochen Dieckmann |
| Succeeded by | Michael Groschek |
| Deputy Leader of the Social Democratic Party | |
| In office 13 November 2009 – 14 May 2017 | |
| Leader | Sigmar Gabriel Martin Schulz |
| Preceded by | Andrea Nahles |
| Succeeded by | Natascha Kohnen |
| Minister of Science and Research of North Rhine-Westphalia | |
| In office 12 November 2002 – 31 May 2005 | |
| Minister-President | Peer Steinbrück |
| Preceded by | Gabriele Behler |
| Succeeded by | Andreas Pinkwart |
| Minister of Federal and European Affairs of North Rhine-Westphalia | |
| In office 24 April 2001 – 12 November 2002 | |
| Minister-President | Wolfgang Clement |
| Preceded by | Detlev Samland |
| Succeeded by | Wolfram Kuschke |
| Member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia forMülheim I (Mülheim an der Ruhr II – Essen VII; 2000–2005) | |
| Assumed office 1 June 2000 | |
| Preceded by | Constituency established |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Hannelore Külzhammer (1961-06-12)12 June 1961 (age 64) |
| Political party | Social Democratic Party |
| Alma mater | Comprehensive University of Duisburg |
| Signature |  |
| Website | www.hannelore-kraft.de |
Hannelore Kraft (néeKülzhammer, 12 June 1961) is a German politician. She served as theMinister-President ofNorth Rhine-Westphalia from 2010 until 2017. Kraft was the first woman to serve as head of government of this state and was the third woman to become head of a state government inGermany. Between 1 November 2010 and 31 October 2011, she was thePresident of the Bundesrat, again the first woman to hold the office.[1] She is the former leader of theSPD North Rhine-Westphalia and served on theSPD's federal executive from November 2009 until May 2017, and was one of the four federal deputy chairs.[2]
The daughter of a streetcar driver and a ticket collector,[3] Kraft graduated in 1980, and first trained as a bank clerk withDresdner Bank. She commenced her studies in economics atComprehensive University of Duisburg in 1982, and studied atKing's College London in 1986 and 1987. She completed her studies in Duisburg in 1989.
From 1989 until 2001, Kraft was a consultant and project manager at ZENIT GmbH ('Centre for Innovation and Technology') inMülheim an der Ruhr, and was head of the local European Info Centre.
Kraft joined theSPD in 1994. She was drawn to politics after becoming head of a works council and struggling to find a place for her son in a nursery.[4] At the2000 North Rhine-Westphalia state election, she was elected to theLandtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. Initially representing electoral district 74 (Mülheim II-Essen VII), she switched to electoral district 64 (Mülheim I) for theelection in 2005.
On 24 April 2001, she replaced Detlev Samland as Minister for Federal and European Affairs, and then underMinister-PresidentPeer Steinbrück, served from 12 November 2002 until 31 May 2005 as Minister for Science and Research.
Kraft was a SPD delegate to theFederal Convention for the purpose of electing thePresident of Germany in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2012.
After the SPD lost the 2005 state election in North Rhine-Westphalia, Kraft was elected leader of the SPD's parliamentary group with 95.7% of the votes, hence becoming the Opposition Leader in the state. In 2007, she was elected chairperson of the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia.
On 13 November 2009, Kraft was elected as one of the four vice chairs of the federal SPD under chairmanSigmar Gabriel, receiving the highest overall vote. A party congress in February 2010 affirmed that she was the SPD's candidate forMinister-President at theMay 2010 state election.[5]
The state election on 9 May 2010 resulted in a near-tie with the governing CDU at 67 seats, and with Kraft's preferred red-green coalition one seat short of an overall majority; at the time, the federal government under ChancellorAngela Merkel blamed the result on voter anger at thefirst aid package for Greece.[6]
After many parallel negotiations and various coalitions, Kraft was elected Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia on 14 July 2010 on the second ballot with a sufficient majority of votes, coming from the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens, whilethe Left Party abstained. Kraft formed a minority government with ministers of Social Democrats and Greens.[7] It was the first time in Germany that a coalition has attempted to rule one of the 16 federal states without a proper majority,[8] with the only exception being ared–green alliance governing Berlin for some months in 2001–2002 without a majority. For nearly two years, Kraft ruled the state without a regular majority, pulling votes for each initiative from opposition parties on the right or the left.[9] Together with the deputy governor,Sylvia Löhrmann from the Green Party, Kraft dubbed her government the "invitation coalition".[10]
After decades of ideological rivalry in the state over the structure of secondary schools, both Kraft and Löhrmann later succeeded in negotiating a cross-party agreement with the centre-rightChristian Democratic Union that is to ensure peace until 2023.[11]
Kraft got attention for aeulogy she gave after a stampede killed 21 people at theLove Parade music festival in July 2010, less than two weeks after she became state premier. When she gave her speech at a memorial ceremony, she spoke of the hours she spent waiting to hear from her son, who was at the event, unsure if he was injured or unharmed, alive or dead.[12]
In October 2010, Kraft was elected President of theBundesrat, according to the customary rotation of the presidency between the Bundesländer. She assumed office on 1 November 2010, becoming the first female office holder, remaining in office until 31 October 2011.
At an SPD convention in Berlin in December 2011, Kraft was confirmed in her vice-chairmanship by 97 percent of party members, the best result for a board member.[13]
Krafts failure to get her 2012 budget plans passed after a court ruled a supplementary budget for 2010 unconstitutional forced her to call an early election and left her exposed to charges of fiscal incompetence.[14] Kraft had hoped to win backing from the opposition FDP for the budget but their long-standing objections were not overcome in time for the vote.[15]
Theresulting election saw the SPD-Green coalition win a nine-seat majority and allowed Kraft to remain in office.Cabinet Kraft II is quite similar toCabinet Kraft I.
Soon after the May 2012 elections, Kraft placed third in aDer Spiegel poll among German politicians right after ChancellorAngela Merkel and the new federal president,Joachim Gauck, and ahead of any other politician in the SPD includingFrank-Walter Steinmeier, who lost to Merkelin 2009, and party chairmanSigmar Gabriel.[16][17] This vaulted Kraft into the top rank of German politicians, prompting speculation that she might be the strongest contender to lead the party against Merkel and potentially succeed her as chancellor.[18][19] However, she soon announced that she did not want to become the SPD's candidate for chancellor, preferring instead to stay in her home state for the five-year term she had just won.[20]
In 2013, Kraft initially opposed national SPD leaders who opted to join Merkel as junior partner for the second time.[21][22] However, she subsequently was part of the SPD team led bySigmar Gabriel, which led the negotiations towards forming a new German government with ChancellorAngela Merkel's CDU/CSU bloc.[23] She headed the SPD's delegation in the energy working group and vocally defended the coal industry, which has a sizeable presence in her state; her co-chair from the CDU/CSU wasPeter Altmaier.[24]
In 2014, Kraft's government plans record spending of 62 billion euros ($85 billion) while trimming the deficit by a quarter to 2.4 billion euros.[25] At the same time, she has repeatedly criticized Merkel's austerity policies during the debt crisis.[26]
In March 2014, Kraft hosted Chinese PresidentXi Jinping in Duisburg as he visited the last stop on theYuxinou Railway between Europe and Asia.[27]
Following her party's loss in the2017 state elections, Kraft remained a member of the State Parliament where she currently serves on the Committee on Sports.[28] She also joined the supervisory board ofRAG AG. In 2019, her official portrait – a photograph made byJim Rakete – was unveiled to the public.[29] In 2020, she announced her intention not to run again in the 2022 state elections.[30]
In 2012, Kraft placed investment in renewable energy at the center of her second term's agenda, stating that more than 30 per cent of electricity in NRW should be coming from renewable sources by 2025.[31] In 2013, Kraft called onAngela Merkel to use tax revenue to cut electricity costs for consumers by 25 percent.[32] On energy companies extracting oil and natural gas by the controversial practice ofhydraulic fracturing, or fracking, Kraft stated in 2014 that "[a]s long as I am governor in North Rhine-Westphalia, there will be no fracking for unconventional natural gas."[33] She also helped get a resolution through theBundesrat on tighter rules for fracking, after visiting Canada to get a first-hand look at shale oil extraction there.[34]
Early in her time in office, Kraft focused ontax evasion, which is a policy that is not exclusively the reserve of the federal government and thus allowed to her to both exercise her power in her state as well as in theBundesrat, the upper house of the federal parliament, where the states are presented and the opposition had a majority at the time.[35] In 2013, Kraft led theBundesrat opposition to a tax agreement withSwitzerland, eventually blocking it as too easy on tax dodgers.[36] Under the proposed law, Germans with untaxed wealth in Switzerland would have been able to legitimize their holdings and retain their anonymity in exchange for paying a one-off penalty charge and submitting to a future withholding tax.
In 2013, the heir of a prominent Jewish art dealerAlfred Flechtheim, who fledNazi Germany, urged the state of North Rhine-Westphalia to relinquish paintings byPaul Klee andJuan Gris that he says were lost due to Nazi persecution; Kraft declined to comment.[37] In 2014, Kraft rejected demands made by museum directors in North Rhine-Westphalia who sought to prevent the sale of twoAndy Warhol paintings,Triple Elvis (1963) andFour Marlons (1966), by the formerWest LB atChristie's New York; in a letter in response to the museum directors, she held that she could not stop the sale because the paintings were not considered items of national cultural importance.[38]
In summer 2015, whenChancellorAngela Merkel allowed tens of thousands of asylum seekers camped out in Hungary totravel to Germany, Kraft asserted that this had sent a signal to thousands of migrants to head straight for Germany; at the time, North Rhine-Westphalia was taking in around a fifth of the new arrivals.[39]
Alongside SenatorCatherine Troendle, Kraft served as co-chairwoman of the German-French Friendship Group set up by theGerman Bundesrat and theFrench Senate.
With 2014 marking the centenary of the start ofWorld War I, Kraft inaugurated a memorial for theArmistice Day inAblain-Saint-Nazaire alongside French PresidentFrançois Hollande and German Defense MinisterUrsula von der Leyen, as well as British and Belgian officials.[40]
On 26 March 2015, Kraft joined Merkel, Hollande andPrime MinisterMariano Rajoy of Spain at the crash site ofGermanwings Flight 9525 in theMassif des Trois-Évêchés for a memorial; North Rhine-Westphalia was the state where the plane was headed and many of the 144 passengers lived. One day later, she and Germany's PresidentJoachim Gauck attended a memorial service in the western town ofHaltern for 16 students and two teachers from the local high school who were killed in the crash.
Kraft is married and has one son. The couple celebrated their church wedding inNamibia in October 2012.[44] Kraft was formerly a Catholic but later converted toProtestantism, joining theEvangelical Church in the Rhineland, a member church of theEvangelical Church in Germany.[45]
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Minister-President ofNorth Rhine-Westphalia 2010 — 2017 | Succeeded by |
 | ||
| International | |
|---|---|
| People | |
