Christian level

Christian Level (2017)

Christian level (born January 7, 1974 in Hamburg ) is a German politician ( SPD ). He has been Minister for Energy, Infrastructure and Digitization (until 2016: Energy, Infrastructure and Regional Development) for the State of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania since 2014 .

Life and work

After graduating from high school in Elmshorn in 1993, Ebene did his community service and began studying law at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald in 1995 , which he completed in 2001 with the first state examination in law. In addition, from 1997 to 2001 he was managing director of the SPD parliamentary group in the citizenship of the city of Greifswald and then until November 2002 press spokesman for the Ministry of Justice of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , headed by Erwin Sellering .

After the clerkship at the Higher Regional Court in Rostock he passed the second state examination in 2004 and was designated as 2005 Lawyer admitted. In addition to his work as a lawyer in the law firm "Hardtke • Svensson & Partner" in Greifswald and Stralsund, level worked from 2006 to December 2011 as a research assistant at the chair for criminal law at the University of Greifswald.

Level is married and has two children.

Political party

Level joined the SPD as a schoolboy in 1990. During his studies he was involved (among other things as chairman from 1996 to 1997) in the AStA of the University of Greifswald. From 1998 to 2007 he was chairman of the SPD local association Greifswald and from 2007 to 2010 of the SPD district association Greifswald (from 2009: Greifswald-Ostvorpommern). Since April 2015, he has been a deputy state chairman of the state executive committee of the SPD in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

MP

From 2009 to 2012 level belonged to the citizenship of the city of Greifswald and was chairman of the education and culture committee. From 2011 to 2012 he was a member of the district council of the Vorpommern-Greifswald district .

Level has been a member of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament since 2016 . In the state elections in 2016 he was directly elected with 28.3% of the first votes in the constituency of Greifswald .

Public offices

Christian level during an "education strike" in 2013

On June 18, 2012, Prime Minister Erwin Sellering appointed Ebene to succeed Reinhard Meyer as State Secretary and Head of the State Chancellery of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

On January 14, 2014, Ebene succeeded Volker Schlotmann as Minister of Energy, Infrastructure and Regional Development. He has been Minister for Energy, Infrastructure and Digitization since November 1, 2016.

As a member of the state government of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, level was also a full member of the Commission for the Storage of Highly Radioactive Waste Materials (Repository Commission) in accordance with Section 3 of the Site Selection Act from 2014 to 2016 .

Transport policy

In 2015, during Christian Pegel's tenure, traffic on the Mecklenburg Southern Railway between Parchim and Inselstadt Malchow was discontinued. As a cost-saving measure, level advocates the closure of the southern runway and the Güstrow – Meyenburg railway line, which has not been used for passenger transport since 2000 , as mobility in the region is ensured with “significantly cheaper buses”. Under Christian level around 250 million euros of regionalization funds were not spent on the rehabilitation of railway lines according to their purpose, but withheld. Two requests from the parliamentary groups of the Left and the AfD for the maintenance of the two routes and a resumption of passenger traffic were rejected on April 12, 2019 with the votes of the SPD and CDU. At the same time, a demonstration for the railway lines took place in front of the town hall, attended by around 60 people from places along the lines. Level made it clear to the demonstrators that he refused to maintain the routes. According to a study by the Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research , no federal state is worse to reach by rail and public transport than Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Christian level, however, rejects an infrastructure expansion based on the example of the neighboring state of Brandenburg, as it runs counter to an austerity policy. For his transport policy, level was sharply criticized both by the Green politician Monika Göpper and by the transport policy spokeswoman for the left in the Mignon Schwenke state parliament . The Malchower CDU member of the Bundestag Eckhardt Rehberg described Level's railway policy as "a piece from the madhouse".