| Hans-Gert Pöttering | |
| Office: | President of the European Parliament |
| Term Start: | 16 January 2007 |
| Term End: | 14 July 2009 |
| Vicepresident: | Rodi Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou |
| Predecessor: | Josep Borrell |
| Successor: | Jerzy Buzek |
| Office2: | Leader of the European People's Party-European Democrats |
| Term Start2: | 20 July 1999 |
| Term End2: | 16 January 2007 |
| Predecessor2: | Wilfried Martens |
| Successor2: | Joseph Daul |
| Constituency Mp3: | Germany |
| Parliament3: | European |
| Term Start3: | 17 July 1979 |
| Term End3: | 30 June 2014 |
| Office4: | Chair of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation |
| Term Start4: | 1 January 2010 |
| Term End4: | 1 December 2018 |
| Predecessor4: | Bernhard Vogel |
| Successor4: | Norbert Lammert |
| Birth Date: | 15 September 1945 |
| Birth Place: | Bersenbrück, Germany |
| Party: | Christian Democratic Union |
| Children: | Johannes Benedict |
| Residence: | Bad Iburg, Germany |
| Profession: | Lawyer |
| Alma Mater: | University of Bonn University of Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies Columbia University |
| Website: | Official website |
Hans-Gert Pöttering (born 15 September 1945) is a German lawyer, historian and conservative politician (CDU, European People's Party), who served as President of the European Parliament from January 2007 to July 2009 and as Chairman of the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation from 2010 to 2017.
He served as a Member of the European Parliament continuously since the first elections in 1979 until 2014 and was Chairman of the European People's Party-European Democrats 1999–2007. When he stepped down in 2014 he was the European Parliament's longest-serving member. As president of the European Parliament he proposed the creation of the House of European History museum in Brussels.
Pöttering never got to know his father who was killed in action during the last days of the Second World War. After Abitur and military service, he studied law, political science and history at the University of Bonn, the University of Geneva, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and at Columbia University in New York. He took his first state exam in jurisprudence in 1973, earned a PhD in political science and history in 1974 with a dissertation on West German defense policy in the 1950s and 1960s and took his second state exam in jurisprudence in 1976, fully qualifying as an attorney.
Pöttering was a member of the European Parliament from 1979 until 2014, by the end of this period he was the only member of the European Parliament to have served continuously since the first elections.
From 1984 to 1994, Pöttering was chairman of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence. From 1994 to 1996, he chaired the working group on the Intergovernmental Conference of the European People's Party (EPP) and EPP-ED Group, the results of which became the official EPP position for the Treaty of Amsterdam.
In 1994, Pöttering became Vice-President of the EPP, and from 1999 to 2007, he was the Chairman of the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament. He was the top candidate of the CDU in the 2004 and the 2009 European elections.
Together with Volker Hassemer he is a member of the advisory board of the pro-European initiative "A Soul for Europe". He was a member of the Reconciliation of European Histories Group.[1]
As part of a deal with the socialist group, it was agreed that he would succeed Josep Borrell Fontelles as President of the European Parliament in the second part of the 2004–2009 term, which he did on 16 January 2007. He was elected with 450 of 689 valid votes, and defeated Italian Green Monica Frassoni, Danish Eurosceptic Jens-Peter Bonde and French Communist Francis Wurtz.
As President of the European Parliament he initiated the House of European History project. He made reference to the House in his inaugural speech in 2007.[2] For many years he is serving as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the House of European History in Brussels.
On 4 December 2009 Pöttering was elected Chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation from 1 January 2010; he was succeeded by Norbert Lammert in 2018.
When the EPP membership of Hungarian party Fidesz was suspended in 2019, EPP president Joseph Daul appointed Pöttering – alongside Herman van Rompuy and Wolfgang Schüssel – to a group of high-level experts who were mandated to monitor Fidesz's compliance with EPP values.[3] [4]
Pöttering is known as an enthusiastic European Federalist and an ally of Angela Merkel. He has stated that his priority will be to rejuvenate the European Constitution.
In February 2020, Pöttering joined around fifty former European prime ministers and foreign ministers in signing an open letter published by British newspaper The Guardian to condemn U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan, saying it would create an apartheid-like situation in occupied Palestinian territory.[5]
Mérite Européen Medal in Gold, Fondation du Mérite européen (2002)
Pöttering lives in Bad Iburg, Germany. He is Roman Catholic, divorced and has two sons.[11]
|-