Reiner Haseloff (born 19 February 1954) is a German politician who serves as the
Minister President of
Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt (german: Sachsen-Anhalt ; nds, Sassen-Anholt) is a state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. It covers an area of
and has a population of 2.18 million inhabitants, making it the ...
. On 9 October 2020, he was elected
President of the Bundesrat. His one-year term started on 1 November 2020.
Political career
Reiner Haseloff joined the then bloc party CDU of the GDR in 1976. He has been a member of the state executive of the CDU Saxony-Anhalt since 1990 and was deputy district administrator of the Wittenberg district from 1990 to 1992.
From 2004 to 2012, Haseloff was deputy state chairman of the CDU. Since December 2008 he has been a member of the CDU federal executive committee.
From 2002 to 2006, Haseloff served as State Secretary at the State Ministry for Economic Affairs and Labour under minister
Horst Rehberger in the first cabinet of Minister President
Wolfgang Böhmer. In 2006, he succeeded Rehberger and became a member of Böhmer's second cabinet.
In the negotiations to form a
coalition government of the Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian
CSU) and the
Free Democratic Party Free Democratic Party is the name of several political parties around the world. It usually designates a party ideologically based on liberalism.
Current parties with that name include:
*Free Democratic Party (Germany), a liberal political party in ...
(FDP) following the
2009 federal elections, Haseloff was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on labour and social affairs, led by
Ronald Pofalla and
Dirk Niebel.
Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt, 2011–present
When Böhmer announced his resignation ahead of the
2011 state elections, Haseloff was the candidate of the CDU. He had already gained national attention by proposing that unemployed people who had no job prospects work for the public interest, a plan that since then has been adopted in a number of federal states.
From 2014 and 2016, Haseloff was one of the members of Germany's temporary National Commission on the Disposal of Radioactive Waste.
During the
European migrant crisis
The 2015 European migrant crisis, also known internationally as the Syrian refugee crisis, was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe in 2015, when 1.3 million people came to the continent to request ...
, in November 2015, Haseloff kept distance to
Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German former politician and scientist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she previously served as Leader of the Op ...
by proposing an "upper limit" (German: ''Obergrenze'') of refugees as the
CSU party did, for the state as well as on federal level.
[„Wir sollten die Grenze für Flüchtlingszahl beziffern“ ](_blank)
Frankfurter Allgemeine, in German At the same time he didn't join a proposal of fellow CDU 2016 state election campaigners
Julia Klöckner
Julia Klöckner (born 16 December 1972) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021. ...
and
Guido Wolf for flexible daily quotas for refugee inflows into Germany, which was a step beyond Merkel's "open-doors" policy but not as far as the CSU party, reportedly in deference to his
SPD coalition partner in the state government. Haseloff said, the chancellor "elaborately fought for a European solution" in the refugee crisis, but this was "out of sight".
In the
2016 state elections, Haseloff was able to keep power in Saxony-Anhalt, with his CDU taking approximately 29 percent of the vote and thereby remaining the largest party in the state parliament, but faced a strong
AfD right wing opposition. Haseloff stated after the elections that "the actual rise, which came for the AfD in the polls has a city name:
It's Cologne."
He explained that the rise of the votes for his party in the state came because "we at least did nothing wrong as a Christian Democratic Union here in Saxony-Anhalt."
Following the elections, Saxony-Anhalt became the first of the German states to be governed by a triple coalition of CDU, SPD and the Green Party. On 25 April 2016, Haseloff was re-elected in parliament as minister president of the state during a second ballot, where he managed to gain one vote more than the coalition majority.
Role in national politics
As one of the state's representatives at the
Bundesrat, Haseloff serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Within his party, Haseloff has been part of the CDU's national leadership team around successive chairwomen
Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German former politician and scientist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she previously served as Leader of the Op ...
(2008–2018) and
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (; Kramp; born 9 August 1962), sometimes referred to by her initials of AKK, is a retired German politician who served as Minister of Defence from 2019 to 2021 and as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) fro ...
(2018–2021) since 2008. He served as a CDU delegate to the
Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the
President of Germany
The president of Germany, officially the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany (german: link=no, Bundespräsident der Bundesrepublik Deutschland),The official title within Germany is ', with ' being added in international corres ...
in 2009, 2010, 2012,
2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...
and
2022
File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretariat; The global monkeyp ...
.
In the negotiations to form a so-called
Grand Coalition
A grand coalition is an arrangement in a multi-party parliamentary system in which the two largest political parties of opposing political ideologies unite in a coalition government. The term is most commonly used in countries where there ar ...
under
Chancellor
Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...
Merkel following the
2013 federal elections, he was part of the CDU/CSU delegation's leadership team. In the – unsuccessful – negotiations to form a
coalition government with the
Christian Social Union in Bavaria
The Christian Social Union in Bavaria ( German: , CSU) is a Christian-democratic and conservative political party in Germany. Having a regionalist identity, the CSU operates only in Bavaria while its larger counterpart, the Christian Democra ...
(CSU), the
Free Democratic Party Free Democratic Party is the name of several political parties around the world. It usually designates a party ideologically based on liberalism.
Current parties with that name include:
*Free Democratic Party (Germany), a liberal political party in ...
(FDP) and the
Green Party
A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence.
Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundati ...
following the
2017 national elections, Haseloff was part of the 19-member delegation of the CDU.
Other activities
*
Deutsches Museum
The Deutsches Museum (''German Museum'', officially (English: ''German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology'')) in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science and technology, with about 28,000 exhibited objects from ...
, Member of the Board of Trustees
*
Central Committee of German Catholics
The Central Committee of German Catholics (german: Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken, ZdK) is a lay body comprising representatives of various Catholic organisations in Germany. They organise the Catholic Days in Germany. The organisation ...
, Member
* Committee for the preparation of the Reformation anniversary 2017, Member of the Board of Trustees
* European Chemical Regions Network (ECRN), President (2006-2011)
* International Building Exhibition (IBA) Urban Redevelopment 2010, Member of the Board of Trustees
Political positions
Ahead of the
2021 national elections, Haseloff endorsed
Markus Söder as the Christian Democrats' joint candidate to succeed
Chancellor
Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...
Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German former politician and scientist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she previously served as Leader of the Op ...
.
Second CDU premier drops support for Laschet's German chancellery run
''Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was est ...
'', 16 April 2021.
Distinctions
* : Knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the G ...
of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre
The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Equestris Sancti Sepulcri Hierosolymitani, links=yes, OESSH), also called Order of the Holy Sepulchre or Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, is a Catholic order of knighthood under ...
(2003)
References
External links
Home page of Reiner Haseloff
, -
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haseloff, Reiner
1954 births
Living people
People from Saxony-Anhalt
German Roman Catholics
Christian Democratic Union of Germany politicians
Members of the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt
Ministers-President of Saxony-Anhalt
Presidents of the German Bundesrat
Knights of the Holy Sepulchre