 | You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
Laurenz Meyer (born 15 February 1948) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union or CDU. From 2000 to 2004, he was general secretary of the CDU.
Meyer was born in Salzkotten, North Rhine-Westphalia. After his Abitur (school-leaving) examinations in 1968, he completed a course of study in economics at the University of Münster, leaving in 1975 as a qualified economist. He was then employed at Vereinigte Elektrizitätswerke Westfalen, or VEW AG (which was later taken over by the RWE group) in Dortmund.
Meyer has been a member of the CDU since 1968. From 1997 to 2001, he was state treasurer of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia. He has belonged to the federal executive of the CDU since April 2000 and was general secretary of the CDU from 20 November 2000 to 22 December 2004.
Meyer was on the Hamm city council from 1975 to 1995 and was CDU leader on the council from 1989 to 1995. In 1994, he campaigned for the office of Lord Mayor, but lost to Jürgen Wieland, the candidate of the SPD (Social Democratic Party).
From 1990 until 2003, Meyer was a member of the state parliament (Landtag) of North Rhine-Westphalia. Here he was party spokesperson for economic issues from 1990 to 1999, deputy leader from 1997 to 1999, and leader of the CDU in the state parliament from 23 February 1999 to 2 June 2000. After losing the 2000 election, Meyer had to give up his office as party leader to Jürgen Rüttgers. From 6 June to 6 December 2000, Meyer was then deputy speaker of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Since 2002 Laurenz Meyer has been a member of the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag). He entered parliament by being on the CDU's party list for North Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany's proportional representation electoral system.
On 10 December 2004, it was reported that Meyer (nicknamed Laurenz Nimmersatt, "Gluttonous Laurenz") was receiving power from RWE (which had taken over his former employer VEW in 2000) at a discounted employee rate, although he had parted company with the group in 1999. One week later, new allegations surfaced, according to which he was receiving payments from RWE even while he was General Secretary of the CDU. Meyer described these as "special dividends". In addition, Meyer was still receiving earnings as deputy speaker in the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament and was thus receiving three salaries. The Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported on 19 December that CDU boss Angela Merkel had stripped her General Secretary of his powers. Close party colleagues demanded his resignation. On 20 December, Meyer announced that he would donate the amount in question (€81,800) to the charity SOS Children's Villages.
After pressure from the party's rank and file, Meyer resigned as general secretary on 22 December 2004. [1] The reason for his resignation was that contrary to his description, the special payment was not a severance pay since Meyer returned to the company only after the CDU defeat at the North Rhine-Westphalian election in May 2000. This fact and the false information he provided to Angela Merkel made his situation untenable for the party. The received payments admitted by him and the announcement of a donation to SOS-Kinderdörfer were especially unable to pacify the party's branches in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein, which were involved with their area's election campaigns.
As a member of parliament, Meyer continued to receive the usual salary of €7,009 a month (€7,960 as of 2012, €8,252 as of 2013), plus the tax-free monthly expense allowance of €3,551 (€4,123 in 2013). Furthermore, he may reactivate his employment contract with the RWE energy company, from which he last drew an annual income of €112,381.
On 23 December 2004, RWE announced the result of an internal investigation into the payments made to Meyer. It found that 160,000 of 250,000 Deutsche Mark were unjustified and had been made by VEW as a result of a "communication error". In a statement on 17 December, Meyer had described this payment as "legally correct", but also admitted "...I have nevertheless become aware of the fact that many people have a problem understanding that at that time I accepted this money, since I went back into the company...".
Most recently,[ when? ] Meyer was employed as RWE's commercial director in the Arnsberg regional office.
Meyer is married and has four daughters. He is separated from his wife and lives with his partner in Hamm.
Karl Arnold was a German politician. He was Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1947 to 1956.
Armin Laschet is a German politician who served as Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 27 June 2017 to 26 October 2021. He served as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 22 January 2021 to 31 January 2022. He was elected to the German Bundestag following the 2021 German federal election.
Herbert Reul is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as State Minister for Internal Affairs in the government of successive Ministers-President Armin Laschet (2017–2021) and Hendrik Wüst. He previously served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP).
Jürgen Rüttgers is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as the 9th Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2005 to 2010.
Volker Kauder is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He served as parliamentary group leader of the ruling CDU/CSU faction in the German Bundestag from 2005 to 2018, during which he was frequently referred to as the "right hand" of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Oliver Wittke is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Karl-Josef Laumann is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Since 2017, he has been the State Minister of Labor, Health and Social Affairs of North Rhine-Westphalia, an office he previously held between 2005 and 2010.
Norbert Alois Röttgen is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He was Federal Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2009 to May 2012. From 2014 to 2021, he was Chair of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee.
Rudolf Paul Maria Henke is a physician and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as a member of the German Bundestag from 2009 until 2021.
Andreas Pinkwart is a German politician and academic who served as State Minister for Economic Affairs, Digitization, Innovation and Energy in the governments of Ministers-President Armin Laschet and Hendrik Wüst of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2017 to 2022 and as Deputy Minister-President and State Minister for Innovation, Technology and Research from 2005 to 2010. He previously was the Dean of HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management and holder of the Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank Chair of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship.
Peter Hintze was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as a member of the German Bundestag from 1990 until his death in 2016.
Paul Ziemiak is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since the 2017 federal election. In addition to his parliamentary work, he has been serving as the Secretary General of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2022, under the leadership of chairman Hendrik Wüst.
Patrick Ernst Hermann Sensburg is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a professor at the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia in Cologne. He served as a member of the German Parliament from 2009 until 2021, representing the Hochsauerlandkreis constituency in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Ralph Brinkhaus is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He served as parliamentary leader of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag from 2018 to 2022.
The 2018 Christian Democratic Union leadership election took place during the party's 31st Congress in Hamburg at the Messehallen convention center on 7–8 December following Angela Merkel's decision in October 2018 not to stand for party leader at the 2018 party conference following the party's bad performance in the 2018 Hessian state election and the party's consistently low numbers in national polls.
The January 2021 Christian Democratic Union leadership election took place on 15 January 2021 at the party's 33rd Congress to elect the leader of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany.
Günter Krings is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2002.
Thomas Walther Rachel is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia since 1994. From 2005 until 2021, he also served as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Sabine Katharina Weiss is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2009.
Hendrik Josef Wüst is a German politician serving as Minister-President of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2021. He is a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In October 2021, he succeeded Armin Laschet as state chairman of his party. Under Wüst's leadership, his party won the highest vote share in the 2022 North Rhine-Westphalia state election.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
