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Heiko von der Leyen | |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | June 2, 1955 Germany |
| Children | 7
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Heiko Echter von der Leyen (born 2 June 1955) is a German physician. He was born into the von der Leyen family in Hanover, which belonged to the German nobility. Von der Leyen is married to Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission since 2019.
Born in 1955, he is the son of physician Ulrich von der Leyen (1917–1992) and his wife Cornelia Maria née Groth (1922–2014). Von der Leyen's family are Lutheran members of the Evangelical Church of Germany.
Von der Leyen studied Medicine at the University of Hamburg before pursuing further studies at Hanover Medical School. From 1992 to 1996, he was a faculty member of Stanford University. [1] He received his Habilitation doctorate at Hanover Medical School in 1998, and was appointed Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine and Experimental Cardiology at Hanover Medical School in 2002.
Von der Leyen became the Director of Hanover Clinical Trial Center GmbH in 2005; Hanover Clinical Trial Center (HCTC) is an academic clinical research organization on the campus of Hanover Medical School. [2] Since December 2020, he is Medical Director of the company Orgenesis, which specialises in cell and gene therapies. [3] Von der Leyen resigned from his position on the supervisory board of Orgenesis in October 2022, after journalists reported that the Italian branch of Orgenesis had received EU research funds in the past. [4] [5]
In 1986, Heiko married Ursula, by birth a member of the Albrecht family. They have seven children. [6] [7] The family lived for four years in Stanford, California during the 1990s. [8]
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 by George II, King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover, it began instruction in 1737 and is recognized as the oldest university in Lower Saxony.
Relations between the European Union (EU) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) or Sino–European relations are bilateral relations that were established in 1975 between the PRC and the European Community. The EU is the PRC's largest trading partner, and the PRC is the EU's largest trade partner.
Ylva Julia Margareta Johansson is a Swedish politician who served as European Commissioner for Home Affairs and Sweden's European Commissioner in the von der Leyen Commission from 1 December 2019 to 30 November 2024.
Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen is a German politician, serving as the 13th president of the European Commission since 2019. She served in the German federal government between 2005 and 2019, holding positions in Angela Merkel's cabinet, most recently as federal minister of defence. She is a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its affiliated European political party, the European People's Party (EPP). On 7 March 2024, the EPP elected her as its Spitzenkandidat to lead the campaign for the 2024 European Parliament elections. She was re-elected to head the Commission in July 2024.
Adina-Ioana Vălean is a Romanian politician who has been serving as European Commissioner for Transport under the leadership of President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen from 2019 until June 2024. She served as a Member of the European Parliament from 2007 until 2019, where she chaired of the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research and Energy in 2019. In the 2024 European elections she was again elected and became a member of the European Parliament.
Charles Michel is a Belgian politician who served as the president of the European Council from 2019 to 2024. He previously served as the prime minister of Belgium between 2014 and 2019. Michel became the minister of development cooperation in 2007 at age thirty-one, and remained in this position until elected the leader of the Francophone liberal Reformist Movement (MR) in February 2011. He led MR to the 2014 federal election, where they emerged as the third-largest party in the Chamber of Representatives. After coalition negotiations, Michel was confirmed as Prime Minister of a MR-N-VA-OVLD-CD&V government. He was sworn in on 11 October 2014, becoming the youngest Belgian prime minister since Jean-Baptiste Nothomb in 1841.
Thomas Ludwig Albert Oppermann was a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). From October 2017 until his death he served as Vice President of the Bundestag. In his earlier career, he served as First Secretary (2007–2013) and later as chairman (2013–2017) of the SPD Parliamentary Group in the Bundestag.
Janez Lenarčič is a Slovenian diplomat who has been serving as European Commissioner for Crisis Management in the First von der Leyen Commission 2019–2024. He is a former director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
The European School, Brussels I (ESB1) is a European School located in Uccle, Brussels, Belgium, and Forest, Brussels, Belgium. Originally the second of the European Schools to be founded, the European School, Brussels I, is today one of four in Brussels, and thirteen such schools across the European Union (EU). It is an all-through school, which exists primarily to provide an education to children of EU staff and officials based in Brussels leading to the European Baccalaureate as their secondary leaving qualification. Its alumni include the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Boris Johnson.
Tobias Lindner is a German economist and politician of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen who has been serving as member of the Bundestag since 2011, as a list member for Rhineland-Palatinate. Since December 8, 2021, he has been Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office.
Gunnar Beck is a German academic, lawyer and sometime politician. He served as deputy legal adviser (EU) at the House of Commons in London from 2002 to 2010 and as legal adviser to the UK parliamentary delegation to the Convention on the Future of Europe from 2002 to 2004. From 2014 to 2019 he was a part-time legal and EU affairs adviser to the Alternative for Germany from 2014 to 2019 and then a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 and 2024. From 2022 to May 2024 he held the position of vice-president of the Identity & Democracy Group. He has been a reader in EU law at the SOAS, University of London since 2005 and a door tenant and practicing barrister at 1EC Chambers from 2013. Beck has both won wider public and academic acclaim, and provoked fierce criticism in response to, his work on the legal reasoning of the European Court of Justice, the legal and political aspects of the euro and migration crises and on 18th/19th century German moral and legal philosophy, especially the works of Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
The von der Leyen family is a German noble family which made its fortune as silk merchants and silk weaving industrialists. The Mennonite family established a major textile business in Krefeld in the 18th century. In its heyday, the business delivered silk to most European courts and aristocratic dynasties. The family was ennobled in 1786 and one branch raised to Baronial rank by Napoleon in 1813 and by the King of Prussia in 1816.
The von der Leyen Commission was the European Commission in office from 1 December 2019 to 30 November 2024. It consisted of one commissioner from each of the member states of the European Union – including Ursula von der Leyen, its president, who is from Germany.
The 2024 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 6 and 9 June 2024. It was the tenth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979, and the first European Parliament election after Brexit. A total of 720 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were elected to represent more than 450 million people from 27 member states. This election also coincided with a number of other elections in some European Union member states.
The Conference on the Future of Europe was a proposal of the European Commission and the European Parliament, announced at the end of 2019, with the aim of looking at the medium- to long-term future of the EU and what reforms should be made to its policies and institutions. It is intended that the Conference should involve citizens, including a significant role for young people, civil society, and European institutions as equal partners and last for two years. It will be jointly organised by the European Parliament, the EU Council and the European Commission. On 19 April 2021, the multilingual digital platform of the Conference futureu.europa.eu was launched.
Jessika Roswall is a Swedish politician of the Moderate Party. She serves as European Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy and Swedish European Commissioner since 1 December 2024.
Sofagate is a diplomatic protocol incident that happened during the visit of President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and President of the European Council Charles Michel to Turkey in April 2021. When Michel and von der Leyen were to meet with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, there were only two chairs and two sofas in the room in which they were received. Michel then seated himself in the chair beside Erdoğan while von der Leyen was offered to take a seat on a sofa in the same room across the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. Michel as a man took the more prominent position than von der Leyen as a woman, despite both having the title President. Many commentators described the incident as sexist, as did von der Leyen herself. Later on, Çavuşoğlu called the accusations against Turkey "unfair", saying that the seating arrangement was made in accordance with the requests of the European side and added protocol officials always "meet and discuss the arrangement before each visit."
Katrin Suder is a German physicist and management consultant who served as State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Defense in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2014 to 2018.
Pfizergate refers to a scandal involving European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer over the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines. The controversy centers on the lack of transparency in the communication and negotiation processes for purchasing a significant number of vaccine doses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Second von der Leyen Commission is the current European Commission, in office since 1 December 2024. It consists of one commissioner from each of the member states of the European Union – including Ursula von der Leyen, its president, who is from Germany.
