Markus Söder

Markus Söder
State Minister for Finance, Regional Development and Home Affairs
Assumed office
2011
Minister-President Horst Seehofer
Preceded by Georg Fahrenschon
Personal details
Born (1967-01-05) 5 January 1967
Nuremberg, Bavaria, West Germany
(now Germany)
Political party Christian Social Union
Religion Lutheran

Markus Söder (born 5 January 1967 in Nuremberg) is a German politician and party member of the CSU party. He is Bavarian State Minister for Finance, Regional Development and Home Affairs (Staatsminister der Finanzen, für Landesentwicklung und Heimat) since 2011. Söder is referred to as the closest competitor and possible successor of CSU chairman Horst Seehofer, who in 2012 had announced his political retreat for 2017/18.[1]

Political career

Career in Bavarian politics

Söder has been a member of the Landtag, the state parliament of Bavaria, since 1994. From 2003 to 2007 he was Secretary General of the CSU party; in this capacity, he worked closely with then Minister-President and party chairman Edmund Stoiber.

Söder has since been member of the Beckstein, Seehofer I and II cabinets. From 2007 to 2008 he was State Minister for Federal and European Affairs in Bavaria and from 2008 to 2011 State Minister for Environment and Health.

During his time in office as finance minister, Söder was put in charge of overseeing the restructuring process of ailing state-backed lender BayernLB in a bid to win approval for an aid package from the European Commission.[2] In 2014, he pushed BayernLB to sell its Hungarian MKB unit to that country's government, ending an ill-fated investment that had cost it a total of 2 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in losses over 20 years.[3] In 2015, Söder and his Austrian counterpart Hans Jörg Schelling agreed a provisional deal that settled the two governments’ array of legal disputes stemming from the collapse of the Carinthian regional bank Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International. Under the memorandum of understanding, Austria would pay €1.23 billion to Bavaria. All legal cases relating to the dispute would also be dropped.[4]

Also in 2012, Söder and Minister-President Horst Seehofer filed a lawsuit in the Federal Constitutional Court, asking the judges to back their call for an overhaul of the German system of financial transfers from wealthier states (such as Bavaria) to the country's weaker economies.[5] On Söder’s initiative, Bavaria became the first regional government in Volkswagen's home country to take legal action against the carmaker for damages caused by its emissions-test cheating scandal. At the time, Söder argued that the state’s pension fund for civil servants had lost as much as 700,000 euros ($780,000) as a consequence of the scandal.[6]

Role in national politics

Söder was a CSU delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 1999, 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2012.

In the negotiations to form a coalition government of the Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) following the 2009 federal elections, Söder was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on health policy, led by Ursula von der Leyen and Philipp Rösler.

In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats (SPD) following the 2013 federal elections, Söder was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working groups on financial policy and the national budget, led by Wolfgang Schäuble and Olaf Scholz, and on bank regulation and the Eurozone, led by Herbert Reul and Martin Schulz.[7]

As one of the state’s representatives at the Bundesrat, Söder is currently a member of the Finance Committee.

Other activities (selection)

Corporate boards

Non-profit organizations

Political positions

During the Greek government-debt crisis, Söder was among the most vocal in calling for Greece to leave the Eurozone.[9] By 2012, he said in an interview: "Athens must stand as an example that this Eurozone can also show teeth."[10]

In 2012, under Söder’s leadership, Bavaria pledged €500,000 ($687,546) in public funding for the Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) to produce a critical, annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf for publication in 2015 when the copyright expired. Söder said at the time that the publication would aim to "demystify" Hilter's manifesto. By 2013, however, the Bavarian state government ended its funding for the project.[11]

Throughout the European migrant crisis, Söder has sharply criticized the migrant policies of Angela Merkel several times. He warned of a "huge security gap" that remained, because the whereabouts of hundred thousands of migrants was still unclear and he strongly doubted that the integration of so many people could succeed. In Söder's view, the Germans didn't want a multicultural society. Refugees should return to their home countries whenever possible. The dictum "Wir schaffen das" ("We make it") of Chancellor Merkel was "not the right signal", instead he suggested "Wir haben verstanden" ("We have understood").[12]

Personal life

Söder has been married to Karin Baumüller since 1999. The couple has three children. Baumüller is one of the owners of Nuremberg-based Baumüller Group, a leading manufacturer of electric automation and drive systems.[13]

In addition, Söder has a child from an earlier relationship.[14]

References

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