Peter Pilz (born 22 January 1954) is an

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

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( JETZT). From 1986 to 2017, he was a member of the Austrian Green Party.

Political career

Born in

Kapfenberg Kapfenberg () is a city in the Bruck-Mürzzuschlag district of the Austrian state of Styria. It lies in the valley of the Mürz river in central Austria. With an estimated population of 22,080 individuals in 2024, it is the third largest city in S ...

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, Pilz was a member of the Austrian Parliament (''Nationalrat'') between 1986 and 1991, 1999 and 2017, and between 2018 and 2019. From 1992 to 1994 he also was federal

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of the Greens. His main area of interest is legal matters and

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. Commonly known wearing a black jacket and a red, grey or green T-shirt, he was the first Austrian politician to keep a

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on the Internet. In January 2005, Pilz made international news when he called for

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to be stripped of his Austrian

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. As

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, Schwarzenegger had refused to intercede in the

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of a convicted murderer, Donald Beardslee. Pilz pointed to an Austrian law which prohibits any Austrian from taking part in, or ordering, an execution. A few months later, Pilz claimed that a person whom he called "Zeuge D" (

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: ''"witness D"'') has information that

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had participated in the murder of 3

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s in Vienna in 1989. According to him the Austrian police had already contacted the witness, who supposedly lived in

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, but this was denied by the Austrian Ministry of Justice. On 25 July 2017, with the disappointment of Green leadership and lack of responses in refugee and migrant crisis, he announced his independent campaign for the elections to the Austrian parliament in the autumn. He headed the '' Peter Pilz List'', a group of intellectuals, artists and entrepreneurs, critical toward the establishment. His new party cleared the 4 percent threshold for entering parliament in the election and handed a major defeat to the Greens, whose support fell to 3.9 percent from more than 12 percent in 2013. On 4 November 2017, after sexual harassment allegations came to light, Pilz announced that he would not take his seat in the National Council, and the seat was assumed by Martha Bissmann. On 22 May 2018, Pilz and his party announced that he would return to parliament before summer, as the trial against him had ended.

Other activities

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, member of the board of trustees2016 Transparency Report
National Council.

References

External links

Pilz's political diary
1954 births Austrian male bloggers Critics of Islamism Living people Members of the 17th National Council (Austria) Members of the 18th National Council (Austria) Members of the 21st National Council (Austria) Members of the 22nd National Council (Austria) Members of the 23rd National Council (Austria) Members of the 24th National Council (Austria) Members of the 25th National Council (Austria) Members of the 26th National Council (Austria) People from Kapfenberg Sex scandals in Austria The Greens (Austria) politicians {{Austria-politician-stub